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BILL SEWALL'S 
STORY OF T. R. 




I 




THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN 1SS3 



BILL SEWALL'S 
STORY OF r. 11, 

By 
WILLIAM WINGATE SEWALL 

With an Introduction by 

HERMANN HAGEDORN 

Illustrated 



"When you get among the rough, 
poor, honest, hard-zvorking people 
they are almost all, both men and 
women, believers in Roosevelt." 

W. W. Sewall 



Harper &' Brothers Publishers 

New York and London 



ss 



otr x^ i^i^'^j 



Bill Sewall's Story of T. R. 



Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published September, 1919 

I-T 



(g)Cl.A529996 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Theodore Roosevelt in 1883 Frontispiece 

WiLMOT Dow IN 1884 Facing p. 6 

William Wingate Sewall in 1884 ... " 6 

Theodore Roosevelt at twenty-one with 

Dow AND Sewall in Maine . . . . " 6 

Roosevelt's letter to Sewall written in 

1884 " 14 

Elkhorn Ranch from across the Little 

Missouri " 18 

The ranch-house " 18 

The stables and corrals at Elkhorn Ranch " 38 

The "women-folks" " 38 

Roosevelt's contract with Sewall and 

Dow " 40 

Theodore Roosevelt on his favorite horse, 

"Manitou" " 42 

Roosevelt guarding Finnegan and Com- 
pany " 70 

Dow and Sewall in the dugout with the 

LOOT of the thieves " 7° 

The ranch-wagon, with "old man" Tomp- 
kins driving and Dow on the white 
horse " 86 

Elkhorn Ranch-house " 90 

COWPUNCHERS connected WITH THE ROOSE- 
VELT OUTFIT " 90 



INTRODUCTION 

Of all explorers in strange and half -dis- 
covered countries, the historian is the most 
eager and indomitable to follow rivers to their 
sources in the hills. Each "crick" is impor- 
tant to him, and the ultimate spring where it 
bubbles up from the ground has to him some 
of the glory of the wide and majestic river 
whose origin it is. 

Historians, seeking one after the other for 
centuries to come to explore the mysteries of 
the paradoxical career of Theodore Roosevelt, 
will have more to say of William Wingate 
Sewall than his Maine neighbors or even the 
statesmen, scientists, and men of letters who 
drew him into their councils, when the time 
came for choosing a national memorial to a 
great President, are likely now to realize. 
For "Bill" Sewall was guide, philosopher and 
friend to Theodore Roosevelt in that period 
in his life when a man's character, emerging 



INTRODUCTION 

from the shelter of home traditions and in- 
herited beliefs, is most like wax under the 
contact of men and events. For, unlike Mi- 
nerva, Theodore Roosevelt did not spring full- 
armed from the head of Jove. Like other 
young men of his age, he had an impression- 
able mind. The photographs of him taken 
during his college days reveal possibilities of 
development strange to those who knew the 
great man only in his developed maturity. 
There is a hint of stubborn dogmatism in 
one photograph, almost incredible to men 
who knew his later contempt for mere theory 
and his persistent eagerness in seeking advice ; 
there is, in another photograph of him in 
cowboy costume, a romantic, dreamy, almost 
sentimental strain, difficult to associate with 
the clear-eyed pursuit of the naked fact 
which characterized Theodore Roosevelt's 
public career. Besides, he wore side-burns at 
a time when side-burns were already being 
looked upon as an effete relic of past ages. 
It was a frail, bookish boy with whiskers, 
dreaming of King Olaf and other long-dead 
fighting-men, who came to Maine at nineteen 
and struck up a friendship with the brawny 



INTRODUCTION 

backwoodsman of thirty-four. To the city 
boy the backwoodsman was the living 
symbol of all that he had admired most in 
the heroes of the past — sea-rover and warrior, 
colonist and pioneer — strength of arm and 
strength of heart, fearlessness and resource, 
self-respect and self-reliance, tenderness, 
patriotism, service, and the consciousness of 
equaHty with all men. Theodore Roosevelt 
poured out his opinions and aspirations to 
him, and, hour on hour, tramping through 
the woods or noiselessly speeding over the 
waters of Mattawamkeag, they threshed out 
with grave seriousness the problems of life 
and death and poHtics and personal conduct. 
The boy had an unusual amount of book- 
learning; the man had a vast fund of plain 
common sense. They admired each other 
immensely, and while Roosevelt, footing the 
bills of the expeditions, was inevitably boss 
and felt free to express his mind as such, on 
occasion Sewall was not hesitant in "going 
for Theodore bow-legged," when he thought 
that the younger man needed an appHcation 
of unadorned Maine EngHsh. 

The friendship, established in Maine and 



INTRODUCTION 

sealed and strengthened by joys and hard- 
ships shared in Dakota, endured unwavering- 
ly through the changing political fortunes of 
Theodore Roosevelt, to the day of his death. 
No touch of condescension on the one side, no 
hint of subserviency on the other, disturbed 
the calm depths of their friendship. Sewall 
was an honored guest at the White House, as 
Roosevelt had once been an honored guest 
at the pleasant house in Island Falls. They 
met rarely, at intervals of years, but when 
they met they met as equals, even though 
one was a woodsman and guide and the 
other was President of the United States. 

"There is no one who could more clearly 
give the account of me, when I was a young 
man and ever since," Theodore Roosevelt 
wrote Sewall a year before his death in a 
letter commending to "Friend William" 
the writer of these introductory lines, "than 
you. I want you to tell him everything, 
good, bad and indifferent. Don't spare me 
the least bit. Give him the very worst side 
of me you can think of, and the very best 
side of me that is truthful. I have told 
Hagedorn that I thought you could possibly 



INTRODUCTION 

come nearer to putting him 'next me,' as I 
was seen by a close friend who worked with 
me when I had 'bark on' than any one else 
could. Tell him about our snow-shoe trips; 
tell him about the ranch. Tell him how we 
got Red Finnegan and the two other cattle- 
thieves. Tell him everything." 

That last injunction of his old friend 
"Bill" Sewall has obeyed. He has told 
"everything," with a sharpness of detail 
and a simplicity and directness of narrative 
which reveals, on the one hand, a memory 
which many a man half "Bill" Sewall's 
years might envy, and, on the other, suggests 
that "the old Mennonite," as they still call 
him in Dakota, has not read his Bible in 
vain. It is an unusual record of an unusual 
friendship, which historians of the future 
will find fascinating for the light which it 
throws not only on Theodore Roosevelt, 
but on the picturesque figure of the bearded 
woodsman whom he chose to be his guide 
and his friend. 

Hermann Hagedorn. 



Dickinson, North Dakota 

June 10, 1919 



BILL SEWALL'S 
STORY OF T. R, 



BILL SEWALL'S 
STORY OF T. R. 



CHAPTER I 

HE came to my house accidentally, in the 
first place; it was an accident, but a 
very good one for me. Two of his cousins, 
Emlen Roosevelt and James West Roose- 
velt, were coming up North from New York 
with Arthur Cutler and Frederick Weeks, 
and in the station at Boston they happened 
to run into an old acquaintance of Cutler's, 
named Andrews. 

Cutler, who was a school-teacher and the 
leader of the party, being the eldest, was 
asked where they were going. Cutler said 
that they were going up to the woods of 

Maine. 
2 I 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

"All right," said Andrews, "but if you 
go up there the place for you to go is to 
Bill Sewall's at Island Falls." You see, I 
kept an open house for hunters there, just 
as my father before me. 

Cutler and his party decided that they 
would take that advice. In those days it 
was quite an undertaking to get to Island 
Falls. There was no railroad up our way 
then and they had to come thirty or forty 
miles by team. But they found me and told 
me what they wanted, and I went with them. 
They were there about three weeks. I had 
the whole party to take care of, not to speak 
of the camp, and altogether I had a pretty 
busy time and wasn't able to give them as 
much attention as I wanted, but they got 
plenty of trout and went home satisfied. 

The next fall they came again and brought 
a thin, pale youngster with bad eyes and a 
weak heart. That was Theodore Roosevelt. 

They had come by way of Lake Matta- 
wamkeag, and it was about dark when they 
got there. Cutler took me off to one side. 
He said: "I want you to take that young 
fellow, Theodore, I brought down, under your 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

special care. Be careful of him, see that he 
don't take too hard jaunts and does not do 
too much. He is not very strong and he has 
got a great deal of ambition and grit, and 
if you should take such a tramp as you are 
in the habit of taking sometimes, and take 
him with you, you never would know that 
anything ailed him. If you should ask him 
if he was having a good time he would tell 
you he was having a very good time; and 
even if he was tired he would not tell you so. 
The first thing you knew he would be down, 
because he would go until he fell." 

I took him and I found that that was his 
disposition right away, but he wasn't such 
a weakling as Cutler tried to make out. We 
traveled twenty-five miles afoot one day on 
that first visit of his, which I maintain was 
a good fair walk for any common man. We 
hitched well, somehow or other, from the 
start. He was different from anybody that 
I had ever met; especially, he was fair- 
minded. He and I agreed in our ideas of 
fair play and right and wrong. Besides, he 
was always good-natured and full of fun. 1 
do not think I ever remember him being 
3 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

"out of sorts." He did not feel well some- 
times, but he never would admit it. 

I could see not a single thing that wasn't 
fine in Theodore, no qualities that I didn't 
like. Some folks said that he was head- 
strong and aggressive, but I never found him 
so except when necessary; and I've always 
thought being headstrong and aggressive, on 
occasion, was a pretty good thing. He 
wasn't a bit cocky as far as I could see, 
though others thought so. I will say that 
he was not remarkably cautious about ex- 
pressing his opinion. I found that he was 
willing at any time to give every man a fair 
hearing, but he insisted even then on making 
his own conclusions. He had strong con- 
victions and was willing to stand up for 
them. He wasn't conservative, but this con- 
servative business is something that I haven't 
much patience with; it's timidity. I don't 
believe in diplomacy. I believe in talking 
things straight . It is about time for that word 
diplomacy to be wiped out. I call it hypoc- 
risy. Talleyrand was great in diplomacy, 
as I read of him, but there could be nothing 
more deceitful and hypocritical than he was. 
4 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Theodore was about eighteen when he 
first came to Maine. He had an idea that 
he was going to be a naturaHst and used to 
carry with him a Httle bottle of arsenic and 
go around picking up bugs. He didn't shoot 
any big game, just ducks and partridges. 
We did a bit of trout-fishing. Theodore was 
never very fond of that. Somehow he 
didn't Hke to sit still so long. 

That fall I had engaged another guide, so 
that the party would be a little better pro- 
vided for. Wilmot Dow was his name. He 
was a nephew of mine, a better guide than 
I was, better hunter, better fisherman, and 
the best shot of any man in the country. 
He took care of the rest of the party himself 
mostly. I was with Theodore all of the time. 
At the end of the week I told Dow that I 
had got a different fellow to guide from what 
I had ever seen before. I had never seen 
anybody that was like him, and I have held 
that opinion ever since. 

Of course he did not understand the woods, 

but on every other subject he was posted. 

The reason that he knew so much about 

everything, I found, was that wherever he 

5 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

went he got right in with the people. Once 
we stayed in a lumber-camp with quite a 
large crew of men, some of them older men 
than generally worked in the woods; old 
woodsmen, they were, who did not know 
anything but the woods. I doubt if they 
could have written their names, but they 
knew the woods, the whole of them, and they 
knew all of the hardships connected with 
pioneer life. They had gone in up to Ox 
Bow on the Aroostook River, and it was a 
long ways from the road. The river was 
their road, and they had made their way 
along it and had managed to live there, 
mostly by hunting. Theodore enjoyed them 
immensely. He told me after he left the 
camp how glad he was that he had met them. 
He said that he could read about such things, 
but here he had got first-hand accounts of 
backwoods life from the men who had lived 
it and knew what they were talking about. 
Even then he was quick to find the real man 
in very simple men He didn't look for a 
brilliant man when he found me; he valued 
me for what I was worth. 

The next fall he was up again. We went 
6 




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WILMOT DOW 
IN 1884 



WILLIAM WINGATE SEWALL 
IN 1884 




THEODORE ROOSEVELT AT TWENTY-ONE 
WITH DOW AND SEWALL IN MAINE 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

up to the Munsungun Lakes at the head of 
the Aroostook River and into the east 
branch of the Penobscot, that they called 
Trout Brook. On the way we had to ford 
the rough - bottomed Catasacoka stream 
which comes down from the mountains and 
is very rapid. We did not want to get our 
feet wet, so we all took off our shoes and 
stockings. His feet were pretty tender and 
the stones hurt him. He crippled himself 
some way, and in trying to favor his feet he 
dropped one of his shoes. The rapid current 
took it into white water and it got in among 
the stones some way, so that he could not 
find it. He had a pair of thin Indian moc- 
casins with him that he had taken for slip- 
pers, and said that he thought he would wear 
them, and he did wear them and went up 
into the mountains. He might just as well 
have gone in his stocking feet, only the 
stockings would have worn off and the moc- 
casins did not entirely; but the protection 
would have been about the same. It must 
have been pretty tedious going, but he made 
no complaint about that. 

On this trip Theodore and I had a pirogue, 
7 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

a sort of dugout. I had to drag it a good 
deal and Theodore had a great respect for 
my strength. One morning it was raining 
and I said that I was sorry. Theodore could 
not see what difference it made, since we 
got wet, anyway. But by the end of the 
day he saw the difference, not being able to 
see where the treading was good. 

Theodore was feeling spry that night and 
wanted to chop. I told him that he must 
not. He didn't quite like that. 

"Why?" he asked. 

"Because if you do use that ax," I told 
him, ' ' first thing you know you will be cutting 
yourself. Then I will have to not only pull 
the dugout, but the dugout and you in it." 

He didn't use the ax. 

Theodore enjoyed that trip. I have a 
letter still that I got from Cutler after he 
got back home. "It takes Theodore two 
hours to tell the story of the Munsungun 
Lakes trip," he wrote. "And then, after all, 
it doesn't seem to have amounted to much, 
except a good hard time." 

Theodore Roosevelt was up again next fall 
and we took a trip up to Mt. Katahdin. The 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

following spring he graduated from college 
and shortly afterward he married and went 
to Europe. I had several letters from him 
while he was there. One of them I prize 
especially. He said that he was having a 
good time and was treated very nicely every- 
where, but the more he saw of foreign lands 
the more thankful he was that he was an 
American citizen, free-born, where he ac- 
knowledged no man his superior, unless it 
was by merit, and no man his inferior, unless 
by his demerit. 

He also wrote that he met some EngHsh- 
men who had climbed the Matterhorn. They 
talked as though nobody else could climb 
mountains, he wrote, so he climbed it him- 
self just to show them that Americans can 
climb, too. 

I had a letter from Cutler the next spring 
saying that Theodore was busy studying law 
and was getting into politics. He was elected 
to the New York Legislature shortly after. 
He was twice re-elected, I believe. 

He was still frail in those days, suffering 
with asthma, and one fall, I think it was in 
1883, his family persuaded him to take a trip 
9 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

out to Dakota. I do not know who had told 
him about the Bad Lands along the Little 
Missoiiri River, but it was there that he went, 
getting off the train at Medora. He ran into 
some ranchmen named Ferris and after three 
weeks with them he found he liked the coun- 
try so much that he bought them out. 



CHAPTER II 

IT was during Theodore's third term in the 
Legislature, in February, 1884, that his 
daughter AHce was born. That very night 
his mother, who had been an invaUd for 
years, died suddenly, and twelve hours later 
his wife died. Cutler wrote me about it and 
I have got his letter still : 

Theodore's mother died on Thursday morning at 3 
A.M. His wife died the same day at 10 a.m., about 
twenty -four hours after the birth of his daughter. 

Of course, the family are utterly demoralized and 
Theodore is in a dazed, stunned state. He does not 
know what he does or says. The funeral of both Mrs. 
Roosevelts took place this morning. A very sad sight. 
The legislature has adjourned for three days out of 
respect for Theodore's loss. 

Three weeks later I had a letter from 
Theodore himself. Here it is : 

6 West 57TH Street, New York. 
March g, 1884. 
Dear Will,— I was glad to hear from you, and I 
know you feel for me. It was a grim and evil fate, but 
II 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I have never believed it did any good to flinch or yield 
for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from 
working. 

I have thought often of you. I hope my Western 
venture turns out well. If it does, and I feel sure you 
will do well for yourself by coming out with me, I shall 
take you and Will Dow out next August. Of course, 
it depends upon how the cattle have gotten through the 
winter. The weather has been very hard and I am 
afraid they have suffered somewhat; if the loss has 
been very heavy I will have to wait a year longer before 
going into it on a more extended scale. So, as yet, the 
plan is doubtful. If you went out, the first year you 
could not expect to do very well, but after that, I 
think, from what I know of you, you would have a 
very good future before you. 

Good-by, dear friend, may God bless you and yours. 
Yours always, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

I went down to New York that spring to 
see him and to talk things over. He said he 
would guarantee us a share of anything made 
in the cattle business, and if anything was 
lost, he said he would lose it and pay our 
wages. He asked me what I thought of the 
proposition. I told him that I thought it was 
very one-sided, but if he thought he could 
stand it, I thought we could. Whatever 
happened, he said, we should not lose by it. 
That was all the bargain there was and all 

12 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

the bargain we needed from him. We knew 

that we were just as safe as if we had had a 

contract. 

I went back to Maine and didn't hear any 

more from him for a while. Then suddenly 

he wrote to me wanting me to come at once. 

I wasn't in shape to come at once, so I wrote 

back and asked him how much time he could 

give me. He wrote, saying that I might have 

what was left of that week and all of the 

next. That was something like ten days to 

get my affairs fixed up, to settle my wife and 

little girl, and get everything in shape to go 

to Dakota. Early in July I got this letter 

from him. 

422 Madison Ave., N. Y., 
July 6th. 

I enclose you the check of three thousand, for your- 
self and Will Dow, to pay off the mortgage, etc., etc. 

I have arranged matters in the West, have found a 
good place for a ranch, and have purchased a hundred 
head of cattle, for you to start with. 

Now a Uttle plain talk, though I think it unnecessary, 
for I know you too well. If you are afraid of hard work 
and privation, don't come out west. If you expect to 
make a fortune in a year or two, don't come west. If 
you will give up under temporary discouragements, 
don't come out west. If, on the other hand, you are 
willing to work hard, especially the first year; if you 
13 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

realize that for a couple of years you cannot expect to 
make much more than you are now making; if you 
also know at the end of that time you will be in the 
receipt of about a thousand dollars for the third year, 
with an unlimited field ahead of you and a future as 
bright as you yourself choose to make it, then come. 

Now, I take it for granted that you will not hesitate 
at this time. So fix up your affairs at once, and be ready 
to start before the end of this week. 

Dow and I met Theodore in New York. 
We all started for Dakota together on July 
28th. We reached Chimney Butte Ranch, 
eight miles south of Medora, which Roose- 
velt had bought of Sylvane and Joe Ferris 
and WilHam Merrifield, on the ist of August. 

It struck me that the man who first called 
that part of the world the "Bad Lands" had 
hit it about right. He was a man named 
Boneval, one of Astor's old fur men. As the 
story was told to me, he had charge of an 
expedition of trappers who had been furring 
up in the Northwest and had intended to go 
down the Big Missouri and get back to the 
point they had started from. But the Indians 
were on the war-path and it was dangerous 
along the Big Missouri. Boneval thought 
that by leaving the Big Missouri somewhere 
14 







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BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

below the mouth of the Yellowstone they 
could go on to the Little Missouri and follow 
that far enough to strike back on the Big 
Missouri below the Indians. 

When they got to the Little Missouri they 
found that the country was so barren and 
desolate that there was no game of any kind, 
and the weather so dry and hot that their 
wagons came to pieces. Their provisions ran 
short and they had a very hard, difficult time 
getting through. For that reason he named 
the country the "Bad Lands." I don't im- 
agine they could have a better name. It is 
only a comparatively short time, they say, 
since it was the bottom of an ocean, as all of 
the tops of nearly all the high hills have clam- 
shells and snail-shells on them and the coun- 
try is cut into deep wash-outs and gulches 
and the hills are very steep. The country 
looked as though it had been thrown up by 
some volcanic power. 

I have heard that General Sully, who took 
an expedition into the region and gave the 
first regular report of the country, was asked 
to describe what the "Bad Lands" were like, 
and he said he "didn't know they were like 
15 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

anything, unless it was hell with the fire gone 
out." 

But there were times that I remember when 
you wouldn't exactly agree that the fire had 
really gone out. I recall one Fourth of July, 
especially, when the temperature was 125 
degrees in the shade with a strong hot wind 
which killed almost every green thing in the 
country. Some willows and cottonwoods, 
that grew in the most moist places, showed a 
sickly green after that day, but the grass was 
all killed. 

To me it was a strange and interesting 
country. Some of the hills had been worn by 
the water in such a way that, from a distance, 
they looked like the ruins of old castles. In 
the fall when the leaves turned it was very 
beautiful. The hills there are not very high, 
but often very steep, and as there is nothing 
higher to compare them with they look higher 
than they actually are. From the top of these 
hills you looked at a great circle as far as the 
eye could reach; the only thing that I could 
compare it to would be a great rag rug such 
as the women make down in Maine, of all 
kinds and colors of rags. It was a country 
16 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

pleasant to look at and always very interest- 
ing. Everything that grows there is dwarfed, 
except the cottonwoods, which grow to a fair 
height in places near the river. On the steep, 
rough hills the red cedar grows, and in the 
fall, when the leaves turn, the stunted bushes 
and shrubs make a variety of color. Some of 
the clay hills which have veins of soft coal, 
get on fire and in cold weather they steam 
and smoke like small volcanoes. 

The first night we were at Chimney Butte 
Roosevelt asked me what I thought of the 
country. I told him that I liked the country 
well enough, but that I didn't believe that it 
was much of a cattle country. 

"Well," he said, "Bill, you don't know 
anything about it." He said, "Everybody 
that's here says that it is." I said that it 
was a fact that I did not know anything.- 
about it. I realized that. But it was the way 
it looked to me, like not much of a cattle 
country. 

Roosevelt had decided to build a comfort- 
able ranch-house at a bend in the river some 
thirty-five or forty miles north of Chim- 
ney Butte. Dow and I were to build the 
17 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

house, so the day after we arrived we moved 
up the river, driving the cattle before us. It 
was all unclaimed land along there, belong- 
ing either to the government or to the North- 
ern Pacific Railroad. We were simply squat- 
ters, as nearly all of the other men were in 
those days. 

We were busy watching cattle until near 
the end of August. It was new work to Dow 
and myself and we liked it. It was interest- 
ing. Besides, the wild, desolate grandeur of 
the country had a kind of charm. Back in 
some of the ravines where the cedars grew 
thick you could easily imagine that no one 
had ever been before ; but you were generally 
wrong when you thought that. Many times 
I had almost made up my mind that I was 
where no human being had been before when 
I would run on a tobacco-tag or a beer-bottle. 

We started building the ranch-house in a 
clump of large cottonwood-trees near the 
bank of the Little Missouri River. West from 
the house it was smooth and grassy for about 
a hundred yards, then there was a belt of 
cottonwoods which went back for some two 
hundred yards. They were the largest trees 
i8 




ELKHORN RANCH FROM ACROSS THE LITTLE MISSOURI 




THE RANCH-HOUSE 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I ever saw in Dakota and it was from them 
that we got most of the timber for the house. 
Back of them the steep clay hills rose to the 
height of two or three hundred feet and looked 
like miniature mountains. A little to the 
northwest was a hill with coal veins in it 
which burned red in the dark. To the east 
we looked across the river about two hundred 
yards, then across a wide bottom covered 
with grass, sage-brush, and some small trees, 
to the steep clay hills which rose almost per- 
pendicular from the river bottom. Beyond 
that was the Bad Lands for perhaps twenty 
miles. 

Early in October we began hewing timber 
for the house and we were at work getting 
material almost all of the time until New- 
Year's. I designed the house myself and it 
was a sizable place, sixty feet long, thirty 
feet wide, and seven feet high, with a flat 
roof and a porch where after the day's work 
Theodore used to sit in a rocking-chair, 
reading poetry. 

While we were cutting the timber Theodore 
went to the Big Horn Mountains for an elk- 
hunt. He wanted me to go with him, but I 
19 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

disliked to leave Dow alone, knowing, if I 
went, one man would not be much of a crew 
to work on the house; so I prevailed on 
Roosevelt to get a man who was familiar 
with the country to go with him. I never 
wanted to go on a hunt so much as that one. 
In one of his books he tells about it: 

The finest bull with the best head that I got was 
killed in the midst of very beautiful and grand sur- 
roundings. We had been hunting through a great pine 
wood which ran up to the edge of a broad canyon- 
like valley bounded by sheer walls of rock. There 
were fresh tracks of elk about, and we had been ad- 
vancing upward with even more than our usual caution 
when, on stepping out into a patch of open ground 
near the edge of the cliff, we came upon a great bull, 
beating and thrashing his antlers against a young tree 
eighty yards off. He stopped and faced us for a second, 
high, mighty antlers thrown into the air as he held his 
head aloft. Behind him towered the tall and somber 
pines, while at his feet the jutting crags overhung the 
deep chasm below, that stretched off between high 
walls of barren and snow-streaked rocks, the evergreen 
clinging to their sides, while along the bottom the 
rapid torrent gathered in places into black and sullen 
mountain lakes. As the bull turned to run, I struck 
him just behind the shoulder; he reeled to the death- 
blow, but staggered gamely on a few rods into the 
forest before sinking to the ground with my second 
bullet through his lungs. 



20 



CHAPTER III 

\X7"H.1LE he was away on this huntlng- 
^ ^ trip we heard that a man who was 
known as a trouble-maker and who worked 
on the ranch of a Frenchman named de 
Mores, a marquis who laid claim to the large 
piece of country on which our ranch was 
situated, had threatened to shoot Roosevelt. 
I told Theodore about it when he came back. 

He said, "Is that so?" 

Then he saddled his horse and rode straight 
to where the man lived. Theodore found him 
in his shack and told him that he had heard 
that a man had said he wanted to shoot him, 
and, said Theodore, he wanted to know why. 

The man was flabbergasted, I guess, by 
Roosevelt's directness. He denied that he 
had ever said anything like it. He had been 
misquoted, he said. 

The affair passed off very pleasantly and 
Roosevelt and he were good friends after that, 

21 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Later in the fall, while Roosevelt was away 
on another trip and Dow and I were getting 
material for the house, we heard that the 
same man who had threatened Roosevelt 
was threatening us. Dow happened to over- 
hear two men talking about us. They were 
not unfriendly to us, but they had evidently 
heard the threats. One remarked to the other 
there would be dead men around that old 
shack where we were, some day. 

Of course, Dow told me of this and right 
there we decided if there were any dead men 
there, it would not be us. 

We went on with our work, preparing for 
an attack. Our guns were where we could 
pick them up in an instant. We were work- 
ing at the edge of a piece of timber and there 
was quite a thicket behind us. We knew that 
if anybody came, he would come by the 
trail and we intended to make for the timber, 
and if he wanted to hunt us there, why, we 
would see who was best at the business. 

One Sunday morning I was writing home 
and Dow had gone out for a walk. Suddenly 
I heard a great fusillade; something over 
twenty guns were fired as fast as I could 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

count. Very soon afterward a half-dozen 
men rode up to the shack. They were cow- 
boys. I knew one of them as the right-hand 
man of the Marquis de Mores, and decided 
that they had come down to look us over. 

I asked them in a friendly manner to dis- 
mount and come in, which they did. As it 
was getting near noon, I asked them if they 
wouldn't like to have something to eat. They 
said they would. I told them the cook was 
out, but I would do my best. We had a good 
pot of beans that we had baked in the ground, 
woods fashion. I dug them out and got what 
bread we had on hand. We had plenty of 
hard bread. I made them some coffee and 
got out all the best things we had in the 
shack. I had decided to treat them just as 
nicely as I knew how. Then if they started 
any trouble I intended to make sure of the 
leader first thing. I think he had had a little 
whisky, as he certainly had a very sharp 
appetite. 

I helped him to the beans and he began to 

praise them. He said he never saw such good 

baked beans and he didn't know when he had 

had anything as good as they were. I had 

23 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

plenty of beans and kept urging him to have 
more. I knew that that was a good way to 
make a man feel good-natured. After dinner 
we went out and looked the place over. They 
thought we had a very nice place, fixed up 
very nice, and didn't find any fault with any- 
thing. The party rode off and I didn't hear 
any more shooting. 

Dow didn't come back until after they had 
gone. He had heard the shooting and I re- 
ported the visit. We decided if there had been 
any danger it had passed, which proved to 
be true. However, we carried our guns for a 
while, just the same. I was always treated 
very nicely by that man afterward and he 
seemed very friendly. 

He was a man who didn't bear a very good 
name. He had killed one man that they were 
sure of and they thought he had killed another. 

When Theodore came back we reported to 
him what had happened. We all concluded 
that if there were any dead men around the 
shack they would be men that would die a 
natural death. 

We went right on with the building of the 
house as soon as the cold weather would let 
24 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

us. I remember the morning that we began 
to put up the walls the thermometer was 
sixty-five degrees below zero. This was the 
coldest weather I have ever experienced. 
No one suffered much from the heat the 
next three weeks. The thermometer ranged 
from thirty to sixty-five below most of the 
time. When it was too cold to go on with 
the work, Dow and I went with a wagon 
over the ice to an Indian village about sixty 
miles south. 

Theodore, who had gone east about Christ- 
mas, came out in April to see how things were 
coming on and to do a Httle hunting. It was 
about that time that he received a threaten- 
ing letter from the Marquis de Mores which 
nearly resulted in a duel. 

The Marquis had some time before become 
impHcated in a bad murder case. Two men, 
one named Reilly, the other O'Donnell, had a 
shack on land the Marquis claimed was his 
cattle range. He had made some talk about 
driving them off the land. Reilly, who was a 
frontiersman, an unusually good shot, had 
said that if this was done by the Marquis 
he would shoot him. 

25 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

The Marquis concluded to take no chances. 
With- a number of his men, he concealed 
himself in the bushes where they had a 
view of the trail on which O'Donnell and 
Reilly would come to town. They waited 
for the two men to come along, and when 
they appeared they saw that they were 
accompanied by a Dutchman whose name 
was Reuter. He was unarmed, and all three 
were unsuspecting. The Marquis waited until 
the men were in the right position, and then 
he and his men opened fire. Renter's horse 
was killed, the stock of O'Donnell's rifle 
was shot off so that he could not use it, and 
Reilly was mortally wounded. But he was 
a man of grit and determination. He fired 
several shots at the smoke before he died. 
He could not see the men that were con- 
cealed in the bushes. 

Maunders, the man who had threatened 
Roosevelt some time before, was one of the 
Marquis's party. The killing was laid to 
him simply because he was the best shot of 
any of the men the Marquis employed. 
The Marquis, however, took complete re- 
sponsibility and was subsequently tried for 
26 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

murder. Renter, who had deposited money 
with Joe Ferris, was summoned as a witness. 
He drew his money from Ferris to pay his 
expenses to go to the trial. The Marquis 
got the idea that Roosevelt had furnished 
money for the prosecution, which, of course, 
wasn't so, and closed his letter by saying 
that there was always a way to settle such 
difficulties between gentlemen. 

Roosevelt read me the letter and said 
that he regarded it as a threat that the 
Marquis would, perhaps, challenge him. 
If he did, he should accept the challenge, 
for he would not be bullied. He said that 
his friends would all be opposed to his fight- 
ing a duel, and that he was opposed to duel- 
ing himself. But if he was challenged, he 
should accept. That would give him the 
choice of weapons. He would choose Win- 
chester rifles, and have the distance arranged 
at twelve paces. He did not consider him- 
self a very good shot and wanted to be near 
enough so that he could hit. They would 
shoot and advance until one or the other 
was satisfied. He told me that if he was 
challenged, he wanted me to act as his second. 
27 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I told him I'd certainly do it, but that I 
didn't think he would have to fight; that a 
man who would lay in ambush and shoot at 
unsuspecting men would not want to fight 
such a duel as that. 

Roosevelt said in his answer to the Mar- 
quis that he had no ill-will toward him, and 
had furnished no money for the prosecution ; 
but as the closing sentence of the Marquis's 
letter implied a threat, he felt it a duty to 
himself to say that at all times and in all 
places he was ready to answer for his actions. 
I told him after he read the letter to me that 
I thought he would get an apology. He 
said that he did not think he would, the man 
might ignore the letter, but he did not think 
he would apologize. 

A few days afterward he came to me with 
a letter in his hands which he read to me. 

He said, "You were right. Bill." The 
Marquis had written, that there was "always 
a way to settle misunderstandings between 
gentlemen — without trouble." He invited 
Theodore to his house to dinner. Theodore 
went and once more everything passed off 
pleasantly. 

28 



CHAPTER IV 

HE finished the house that spring of 1885 
and sometime around the ist of June 
Roosevelt went east, and Dow went home 
to be married and to bring his wife and 
mine back. They all left at the same time. 
Rowe, one of the hands, went to the round-up 
and I was left entirely alone. I had plenty 
to keep me from being lonesome, though I 
saw very few people for a month. 

Fourth of July came, and as I heard that 
there was going to be a great celebration 
in Medora, I decided to go and take in 
the fun. 

There were lots of cowboys there and in 
the forenoon they had foot races and horse 
races which were exciting to watch. Every- 
body was comparatively sober and all seemed 
to enjoy themselves. But before night there 
were signs of trouble. Too much bad whisky 
had begun to show its effects. There were 
4 29 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

some small disagreements, but nothing serious 
happened. 

About sunset the town had become pretty 
noisy and hilarious. The cowboys were be- 
ginning to bunch in groups, and occasionally 
they went into the hotel for a drink. 

I was in the hotel when a party came in. 
They all drank and then went out, some of 
them pretty wild. Then they proceeded up 
the street a short distance, and a minute later 
all hands began to shoot. The bullets went 
whistling by the front door of the hotel, 
striking the railroad buildings or the em- 
bankments. 

The hotelkeeper peered out cautiously and 
said, "It's pretty noisy out there." Then he 
pulled down his blinds and locked his doors. 

I couldn't think of any business that I had 
outside that evening, so I decided to go to 
bed. During the night I was awakened a 
good many times by a fusillade, which sounded 
a good deal like firing India crackers by the 
bunch, only a good deal louder. After the 
shooting there was generally a chorus of yells. 
As I was in a brick house, perfectly safe, I 
didn't allow it to disturb me very much. 
30 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

About daylight the next morning I got 
up to go home to the ranch. Everything was 
silent and quiet. The greater part of the 
crowd had been paralyzed and were lying 
around like poisoned flies, wherever the paral- 
ysis had taken them. The town could have 
been taken that morning by a very few men. 
The dead-shot whisky had been worse than 
the pistol-shooting. Nobody had been hurt 
by that. 

I went home and began to get ready for a 
trip with some cowboys who were going up 
farther north, to look for some cattle and 
horses which they thought had been stolen 
and taken in that direction. We met at 
Eaton Ranch, about ten miles north of 
ours, and the next morning prepared for 
our journey. 

There were six of us; three were natives 
of Maine, one of Florida, one of Texas, and 
one of Kentucky, all old, experienced cattle- 
men except myself and one other. The 
Texan was the boss. He was a good fellow 
and understood his business. He was also 
the cook for the expedition, for he had been 
a rebel soldier in the Civil War and was used 
31 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

to camping. We carried our provisions on 
pack-horses — flour and baking-powder, bacon, 
coffee, and sugar — and each man carried his 
own eating utensils, a plate and a dipper, 
besides the knife which he generally car- 
ried in his pocket. Four of the men, the 
regular cowboys, took their horses with them, 
seven to the man. Myself and the boy who 
went with me each had two riding-horses and 
a pack-horse. 

The country at that time was at its best. 
Acres of wild roses were in bloom, and here 
and there were plums, wild morning-glories, 
and cactuses, which really made the country, 
in places, look beautiful. The second day of 
our journey lay in more level and less barren 
country as we left the Little Missouri and 
struck for the Big Missouri. 

Somewhere below the mouth of the Yellow- 
stone we saw a white object ahead, which I 
took to be a large stone, although there were no 
stones that I had seen on the way. When we 
came near, it proved to be a small tent. Two 
of our party examined it, and found lying on 
the ground inside it what we used to say was 
32 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

the only kind of good Indian there was — 
namely, a dead one. He had been taken sick, 
I guess, and had been left there by his party. 
The next day, when we reached the Missouri 
River, we came across a party of Indians. 
They were Tetons. One of the men in our 
party could talk their language and they told 
him that the dead Indian belonged to their 
party and had died at that place. They didn't 
tell us why they hadn't thought to bury him. 
We proceeded down the Big Missouri River 
from this point, the cowboys thinking they 
would find the stolen horses and cattle here- 
abouts. A Httle way on we came on a place 
where there was a white man and an Indian 
living. As soon as we came in sight the white 
man disappeared. The boss of our outfit 
wanted to see him and talk with him to see if 
he could get any information, but the man 
was evidently afraid we were vigilantes and 
kept out of sight. At last the Texan managed 
to make the Indian understand what he 
wanted and got him to try and get the white 
man to come out. After waiting nearly all 
day he got up courage enough at last to show 
himself and was much relieved when he found 
33 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

out that we were not after him. Evidently 
he had a bad conscience that troubled him 
some. 

We followed the Big Missouri down to the 
mouth of Knife River, then followed the 
Knife River to its head and struck from there 
westward back to the Little Missouri. That 
afternoon we saw a bad-looking shower in the 
west, and as we were going west we were sure 
to meet it. Five or six miles in the distance 
was the high hill called Killdare Mountain, on 
which there was a growth of trees. The boss 
thought it was a bad-looking cloud and that 
it might be a cyclone, and that we had better 
hurry and get in the shelter of the trees. We 
all started for the oaks and rode as hard as 
we could. This was very good fun. We ar- 
rived there just in time to get our horses 
unsaddled. Each man picketed the horse that 
he was riding and about that time the shower 
started with fury. It was not a cyclone, but 
a hailstorm, or a series of hailstorms, which 
covered a space of a couple of hours, with 
short intervals between. When the shower 
was over the ground was covered with hail. 

From Killdare Mountain to the Little Mis- 
34 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

souri, we passed through very rough country. 
In one place we crossed a creek on a natural 
bridge of clay. It was probably one hundred 
feet from the top of the bridge to the bottom 
of the creek and about twenty-five feet thick, 
and although it had been made by water it 
looked as if it had been made by men. 

That night we got back to Eaton Ranch. 
We had been gone eighteen days and the boss 
estimated we had ridden five hundred miles. 
I enjoyed this trip very much. It was all new 
to me and different from anything that I had 
ever seen or done. I was about as green as a 
man could be. I told the rest of the party 
the morning we started that I was entirely 
new, but if they could find anything for me 
to do, where they thought I would be of any 
use, to tell me and show me how. I would do 
the best I could and would be a good fellow if 
I wasn't good for anything else. That amused 
them and they were very nice to me during 
the whole trip. The boss used to pack my 
horse for me the first few days, until I got 
so I could do it myself. I looked around to 
see what I could do to make myself useful, 
and I found that it was necessary that we 
35 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

should be up early in the morning, but that 
it was rather hard for the rest of the boys to 
wake up at the right time. I had learned to 
be an early riser before I left the East and it 
was no trouble for me to get up in the morn- 
ing. The mornings were cloudless and beau- 
tiful. They were cool, and we used often to 
stop from ten o'clock until about three in the 
afternoon, and do our riding long in the even- 
ing. I took it upon myself to get up in the 
morning and make the fires, get the water 
and make the coffee, and call the boss, who 
cooked the bread, while I fried the bacon and 
boiled the coffee. All the cooking utensils we 
had were a tin basin, in which to mix the 
bread, and the fry -pan which was used as the 
baker. It was necessary to make two batches 
of bread for each meal, the fry-pan being a 
rather small one. The cook used to hold the 
pan on the fire until the first loaf of bread got 
so he could take it out, then he would set it 
up edgeways before the fire and prop it up 
while it finished baking. Meantime he put 
the second batch in the fry-pan and cooked 
it. The bread was good and light. I don't 
think I ever ate any that tasted any better. 
36 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

I had a great appetite and everything tasted 
deHcious. 

I found the cowboys to be good com- 
panions, the same class of men I was used 
to being with at home, only they were en- 
gaged in a different business. They were 
pleasant, kind-hearted men who were all 
right unless they had whisky, and were no 
worse then than our men of the same class 
under the same conditions. 



CHAPTER V 

OHORTLY after I got home to Elkhorn 
*^ Dow came back to the ranch, bringing his 
wife and mine and our Httle daughter. Rowe 
returned from the round-up, and Roosevelt 
from New York. We then began to hve like 
white folks. 

People roundabout used to say, "no house 
is big enough to hold two women," but there 
was never any harsh word spoken at Elkhorn 
Ranch, and I have an idea that those were 
the most peaceful years of Roosevelt's life. 
He spent most of the time with us, going 
East very little. He loved the desolate coun- 
try, as we all did, especially in June and the 
first part of July when the rain that falls 
thereabouts falls in thunder-showers and 
the country loses much of its dreary aspect. 
The clay buttes were always barren except 
for some few shrubs and stunted sage-brush, 
but in the spring the narrow valleys and 
38 




THE STABLES AND CORRALS AT ELKHORN RANCH 




THE " WOMEN-FOLKS " 

(Mrs. Sewall is holding her daughter Nancy; beside her is Mrs. Dow. The two 
other women were neighbors) 



I 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

tnoister places were green. There were many 
acres of wild roses and wild pomegranates; 
in places there were berries that people called 
June berries, though they did not ripen until 
July. They reminded me of sugar-plums 
and the women-folks used to make jelly of 
them. 

We were all a very happy family at Elk- 
horn Ranch those two years that we spent 
there with Theodore Roosevelt. He worked 
like the rest of us and occasionally he worked 
longer than any of the rest of us, for often 
when we were through with the day's work he 
would go to his room and write. He wrote 
several hunting-books during those years, be- 
sides the Life of Benton and the Life of Gou- 
verneur Morris. More often, however, he 
would sit before the fire cold autumn or winter 
nights and tell stories of his hunting-trips or 
about history that he had read. He was the 
best-read man I ever saw or ever heard of, 
and he seemed to remember everything that 
he read. His mind was exactly lil<:e that 
fellow that Byron speaks about — I forget 
where, but I cannot forget that line — 
Wax to receive, and marble to retain. 
39 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

It was at that time that Roosevelt made a 
definite written contract with us. Here is 
the contract as he wrote it himself: 

Little Missouri, Dakota, 
June 20, i88j. 
We the undersigned, Theodore Roosevelt, party of 

the first part, and William Sewall and Wilmot S. Dow, 

parties of the second part, do agree and contract as 

follows: 

(i) The party of the first part having put eleven 
hundred head of cattle, valued at twenty-five 
thousand dollars ($25,000) on the Elkhom Ranche, 
on the Little Missouri River, the parties of the 
second part do agree to take charge of said cattle 
for the space of three years, and at the end of this 
time agree to return to said party of the first part 
the equivalent in value of the original herd (twenty- 
five thousand dollars); any increase in value of 
the herd over said sum of twenty-five thousand 
dollars is to belong two-thirds to said party of the 
first part and one-third to said parties of the second 
part. 

(2) From time to time said parties of the second part 
shall in the exercise of their best judgment make 
sales of such cattle as are fit for market, the moneys 
obtained by said sales to belong two-thirds to said 
party of the first part and one-third to said parties 
of the second part; but no sales of cattle shall be 
made sufficient in amount to reduce the herd 
below its original value save by the direction in 
writing of the party of the first part. 

(3) The parties of the second part are to keep accurate 

40 



'Z.-Cr<. ^5^ (yf^^t^ c/jL^^^o-^t'^ /:y(. J^ ^'<JC.o-c^.,<rtf 



/^^ ^.^ /^^^ /UW- 






Z^ Cvve-<^, 






BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

accounts of expenditures, losses, the calf crop, etc.; 
said accounts to be always open to the inspection 
of the party of the first part. 
(4) The parties of the second part are to take good care 
of the cattle, and also of the ponies, buildings, etc., 
belonging to said party of the first part. 
Signed, 

Theodore Roosevelt 

(party of the first part), 
W. W. Sewall 
W. S. Dow 

(parties of the second part). 

I do not know whether the plain story of 
the business side of that ranch has ever been 
told. Theodore invested over $50,000 to 
stock our claim, in cattle and horses — about 
one hundred head of the latter — and he lost 
most of it, but came back physically strong 
enough to be anything he wanted to be from 
President of the United States down. He 
went to Dakota a frail young man suffering 
from asthma and stomach trouble. When he 
got back into the world again he was as 
husky as almost any man I have ever seen 
who wasn't dependent on his arms for his 
livelihood. He weighed one hundred and 
fifty pounds, and was clear bone, muscle, and 
grit. That was what the ranch did for him 
5 41 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T, R. 

physically. What It did for him financially 
was a different story. I do not believe 
Theodore Roosevelt ever made a dollar out 
of his cattle or ever saw again more than a 
small part of his original investment. 

Our whole trouble was that cattle had 
already begun to fall in price before we started 
and they continued to fall. The truth about 
it all is that in that country, with the long, 
dry summers and the cold winters, no one 
but a man who was an experienced ranchman 
and, at the same time, a sharp business man 
could ever have expected to come out ahead 
of the game, and Roosevelt did not pretend 
to be a business man. He never cared about 
making money and he didn't go to Dakota 
for the money he expected to make there; he 
came because he liked the country and he 
liked the people and he liked the wild, advent- 
urous life. The financial side of the ranch 
was a side issue with him. He cared more for 
writing books than he did about business, and 
I guess he cared even more then about doing 
something in public life than he cared about 
either. He went East quite often. The poli- 
ticians would send for him. He used to com- 
42 




THEODORE ROOSEVELT ON HIS FAVORITE HORSE, " MANITOU 
(Photograph by T. W. Ingersoll, used by courtsey of W. T. Dantz) 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

plain to me that the telegraph station was 
too near, though it was a good thirty miles 
away, down at Medora on the Northern 
Pacific. 

Roosevelt led the regular life of a Dakota 
ranchman except that he did a good deal of 
reading and writing which ranchmen, as a 
rule, are not such good hands at. He did all 
of the regular work of the cowboy and used 
to attend the round-ups that were held within 
a hundred or two hundred miles of our ranch. 
For days on end and all day long he would 
ride the range after the cattle. 

In Wilderness Hunter he tells about it bet- 
ter than I can. 

Early in June, just after the close of the regular 
spring round-up, a couple of supply-wagons with a 
score of riders between them were sent to work some 
hitherto untouched country between the Little Mis- 
souri and the Yellowstone. I was going as the repre- 
sentative of our own and one or two other neighboring 
hands, but as the round-up had halted near my ranch 
I determined to spend a day there and then to join 
the wagons, the appointed meeting-place being a cluster 
of red scoria buttes some forty miles distant, where 
there was a spring of good water. Most of my day at 
the ranch was spent in slumber, for I had been several 
weeks on the round-up, where nobody ever gets quite 
43 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

enough sleep. . . . The men are in the saddle from 
dawn until dusk, at the time when the days are longest, 
and in addition there is the regular night guarding and 
now and then a furious storm or a stampede, when for 
twenty-four hours at a stretch the riders only dismount 
to change horses or snatch a mouthful of food. 

I started in the bright sunrise, riding one horse and 
driving loose before me eight others, one carrying my 
bedding. They traveled strung out in single file. . . . 
In mid-afternoon I reached the wagons. . . . Our 
wagon was to furnish the night guards for the cattle; 
and each of us had his gentlest horse tied ready to 
hand. The night guards went on duty two at a time 
for two-hour watches. By good luck my watch came 
last. My comrade was a happy-go-lucky young Texan 
who for some inscrutable reason was known as "Latigo 
Strap"; he had just come from the South with a big 
drove of trail cattle. A few minutes before two one 
of the guards who had gone on duty at midnight rode 
into camp and wakened us by shaking our shoulders. 
. . . One of the armoyances of guarding, at least in 
thick weather, is the occasional difficulty of finding the 
herd after leaving camp, or in returning to camp after 
the watch is over; there are few things more exasper- 
ating than to be helplessly wandering about in the 
dark under such circumstances. However, on this 
occasion there was no such trouble, for it was a brilliant 
starlit night and the herd had been bedded down by a 
sugar-loaf butte which made a good landmark. 

As we reached the spot we could make out the forms 

of the cattle lying close together on the level plain; 

and then the dim figure of a horseman rose vaguely 

from the darkness and moved by in silence; it was the 

44 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

other of the two midnight guards on his way back to his 
broken slumber. At once we began to ride slowly- 
round the cattle in opposite directions. We were silent, 
for the night was clear and the herd quiet. 

In wild weather, when the cattle are restless, the 
cowboys never cease calling and singing as they circle 
them, for the sounds seem to quiet the beasts. For 
over an hour we steadily paced the endless round. 
Then faint streaks of gray appeared in the east. Latigo 
Strap began to call merrily to the cattle. A coyote 
came sneaking over the butte and halted to yell and 
wail. As it grew lighter the cattle became restless, 
rising and stretching themselves, while we continued 
to ride around them. 

"Then the bronc' began to pitch 
And I began to ride; 
He bucked me off a cut bank. 
Hell! I nearly died!" 

sang Latigo from the other side of the herd. A yell 
from the wagons afar off told that the cook was sum- 
moning the sleeping cow-punchers to breakfast . . . 
all the cattle got on their feet and started feeding. 

Roosevelt was afraid of nothing and nobody. 
I remember a "bad man" he met once in some 
small town in the Bad Lands. The man had 
been drinking and he had heard of Roosevelt, 
the new-comer to the frontier. Theodore was 
not a big man — he was only of medium height, 
weighing about a hundred and fifty pounds, 
45 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

and he wore glasses. But grit to the heel! 
The fellow called him a "four-eyed tender- 
foot" and tried to take his measure in abusive 
language. Theodore paid no attention to all 
this, and the tough naturally concluded that 
he was afraid of him. Suddenly, Roosevelt 
let out and caught him on the butt of the 
jaw — and he flattened out. This gained him 
some reputation. 

He was a great hand to see and hear all of 
the funny things, and he enjoyed good jokes 
and stories even if the joke was on himself. 
At one time he was out riding and stopped 
for luncheon at the house of a woman who 
had a great reputation for making buckskin 
shirts. She was good deal of a character who 
was living in a wild bit of country with a 
man who had shot the man she lived with 
before. He might have been her husband, for 
all I know, and might not. Theodore always 
carried a book with him wherever he went, 
and was sitting in a corner reading, with his 
legs stretched out. The woman, who was 
getting his dinner, stumbled over his feet. 

She told him to move that damned foot. 

He said that he thought that was a perfect- 
46 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

ly proper way for a lady to ask a gentleman 
to move, but that he had never happened to 
hear it put that way before. However, he 
said he moved the foot and what was at- 
tached to it and waited until he was called 
to dinner, which proved to be excellent, paid 
for it, and left as quickly as he could. He 
did not want to be in that woman's way 
again. 

Roosevelt was very melancholy at times, 
and, the first year we were in Dakota, very 
much down in spirits. He told me one day 
that he felt as if it did not make any differ- 
ence what became of him— he had nothing 
to live for, he said. I used to go for him 
bow-legged when he tallied like that, telHng 
him that he ought not to allow himself to 
feel that way. 

"You have your child to Hve for," I said. 

"Her aunt can take care of her a good deal 

better than I can," he said. ' ' She never would 

know anything about me, anyway. She 

would be just as well off without me." 

"Well," I said, "you should not allow 
yourself to feel that way. You won't al- 
ways feel that way. You will get over 
47 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

this after a while. I have had troubles of this 
kind — ^nothing like what you have, nothing 
so great — but I know how such things are; 
but time heals them over. You won't always 
feel as you do now and you won't always be 
willing to stay here and drive cattle, because 
when you get to feeling differently you will 
want to get back among your friends and as- 
sociates where you can do more and be more 
benefit to the world than you can here driving 
cattle." And I said, "If you cannot think of 
anything else to do you can go home and 
start a reform. You would make a good 
reformer. You always want to make things 
better instead of worse." 

He laughed about it; but he never said 
anything more to me about feeling that he 
had nothing to live for. Maybe he thought 
I was not sympathetic. 



CHAPTER VI 

THAT autumn while Roosevelt was away 
on a hunting-trip I went on a hunt of my 
own that was as exciting, in its way, I guess, 
as anything that he came across on his trip; 
and it wasn't wild animals I was hunting; it 
was horses. 

It happened that in the spring the cow- 
boys of our outfit had gone to ride one Sun- 
day, and when they came back had turned 
out on the range the horses they had ridden. 
They did not take the trouble to put them 
with the main herd, thinking the horses would 
find the herd themselves. The main herd, 
it happened, was on the east side of the 
river. The four horses were on the west side. 
Instead of joining the main herd the horses 
went southwest, which took them between the 
Little Missouri River and the Yellowstone. 

We had several hunts for them during the 
summer, but were never able to find any 
49 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

trace of them. Just before Thanksgiving 
we heard that the horses had been seen, and, 
having a Httle time, I concluded to make a 
hunt, taking Rowe with me. Dow remained 
at home. 

Rowe and I went directly to a ranch where, 
we had heard, they had seen the horses. 
Some of the men there told us they had seen 
them some little time before, but that there 
was another ranch quite near where the 
horses had been seen more recently. It was 
near night when we got to this second ranch. 
We explained our business to the man in 
charge and asked for a place to stay all night. 
He said he was glad to have us. That was 
the fashion at that time. Any ranchman was 
welcome at the ranch of another ranchman. 
He had seen the horses two days before, he 
said, and felt quite sure he could find them. 
He said he would go with us the next morn- 
ing, as he had lost a horse and it might be 
with them. 

We got up early next morning and started. 

I never saw such a morning while I was in 

Dakota. It was foggy and both grass and 

bushes were heavily loaded with mist. When 

50 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

we first started we could see but a little, but 
our guide was used to the country and he 
knew where to go. We went to the place 
where he had seen the horses and found their 
tracks in the soft ground round a spring. It 
was evident that they had been there quite 
recently. 

The fog had now begun to lift. We divided, 
all going east toward the head of the valley, 
but Rowe and our guide taking one side, 
while I took the other. 

After riding a mile or two I saw three 
horses a long way off. I examined them with 
my glass and found they were our horses 
and that they were watching something. A 
second later I saw that the object they were 
looking at was the other two men, who were 
nearer to them than I was. Suddenly the 
three horses started. After them I went, as 
fast as I could go. They disappeared over 
a rise in the land and the two riders dis- 
appeared after them. 

I was alone and some distance behind and 

doubted if I would see either the horses or 

the men again that day, but after riding on 

for a few miles I came upon the two men 

51 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

waiting for me. The horses had turned to 
the right and the men thought I would miss 
the animals if they went on. We turned and 
rode on in the direction that the horses were 
last seen. Finally we came in sight of the 
runaways again. They seemed to be trying 
to get to the east into rough country. I had 
been rather gaining, and about this time had 
got the lead and was trying to head them to 
the west where it was smoother and there 
was a creek. 

By this time the fog had lifted and I could 
see perfectly. We began to get into rough 
country cut up with deep washouts, the sides 
being cut perpendicular through the clay. 
The gullies were anywhere from six to thirty 
feet deep and anywhere from two to six or 
eight feet wide. The wild horses leaped 
them. I wondered what my horse was go- 
ing to do. I found quickly enough that he 
wasn't going to let himself be stumped. He 
leaped the gullies just like the wild horses. 
At first, when I looked down into those 
gulches, it looked a little risky, but I decided 
that my horse knew his business, so I gave 
him his head and didn't try to rein him at all, 
52 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

as I was afraid I might bother him. We leaped 
gulch after gulch in safety. At one time we 
came to a very steep hill, which the wild 
horses ran down full speed. My horse fol- 
lowed at the same gait. It seemed almost im- 
possible to me for him to keep his feet, as it 
was not only steep, but full of round stones 
which the horses had started and which kept 
rolling along with him. 

After plunging down this slope, we came 
to a dry creek. It was quite wide, perhaps 
fifty yards across. The horses followed an 
old buffalo trail, which took them down into 
the creek. From this creek they ran directly 
into another one. My horse didn't follow the 
leaders. He took a straight cut across the 
creek. The wall was perpendicular. He 
leaped over it. It was somewhere between 
six and eight feet to the bottom, but he 
landed right enough and made a charge at 
the opposite side. I hadn't much time to 
look, but I couldn't see any way that he 
could get up over that steep bank and 
thought he was a fool for trying it. I let 
him go, however, and don't know yet how 
he ever made it, but when he finally landed 
53 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

he was on his side and I was astraddle of 
him on the ground. He jumped up under me. 
I got my feet into the stirrups and we went on. 

We next came to a large and very steep hill 
as round as a pot. It was too steep to climb 
and the runaways turned to the right to circle 
it. I was letting my horse go exactly as he 
pleased. He turned to the left. We raced 
around the hill, which butted against another 
creek. The bank must have been a hundred 
feet high. Between the bank of the creek and 
the base of this steep hill that we had been 
following was a smooth, level place eight or 
ten feet wide, where the buffaloes had had a 
trail years before. 

Right at the narrowest part of this trail I 
met the horses. They threw up their heads, 
stopped, and looked at us for an instant. I 
thought I could see disappointment in their 
faces as much as I could in the faces of human 
beings, as much as to say, "We are beat." 
They turned and trotted off westward a short 
distance, then stopped entirely and walked 
down to a creek and drank. They crossed the 
creek, and when we got up on some high land 
I looked back and could see my two compan- 
54 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

ions a long way behind. I waited until they 
overtook me. 

The Texan knew just where he was and 
what to do. He said there was a band of ten 
horses somewhere very near and the two 
bands would fight each other very quickly 
if we did not look out. There was a corral 
very near us, he said, and we could drive our 
horses all into that. We did so, and he, being 
an expert with a lasso, caught our horses 
for us. 

We celebrated our capture of the horses and 
Thanksgiving Day at the same time in a way 
I sha'n't ever forget. 

It was two days before Thanksgiving that 
we caught the horses, and we spent that night 
at a ranch near by. The next morning we 
left the horses we had caught at this ranch 
for the folks there to keep until we came back, 
and started for the mountains to find the 
fourth horse that we were after. 

We rode forty miles that day and spent 
the night at Glendive. Next morning we 
crossed the Yellowstone River by ferry and 
started for the Kavanaugh Ranch, where we 
hoped to find the lost horse. It was early in 
55 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

the morning when we started, and the fog on 
the Yellowstone River was so thick that we 
missed our way and took the longest way to 
the place we were aiming at. Along toward 
noon we began to be hungry. We remembered 
that it was Thanksgiving Day and somehow 
that didn't make our appetites any less. It 
looked to us pretty clear that we had a fair 
prospect of missing our Thanksgiving dinner. 

We began to look around for a ranch where 
we thought that people might be celebrating, 
but all of the shacks or buildings we came to 
were deserted. About noon we got on to 
some high land and from there, about a mile 
away, we saw a small house from which smoke 
was rising. Since there was smoke there we 
knew there must be fire, and if there was a 
fire there must be people. Rowe and I began 
to cheer up. 

We rode over to the house, and there in 
front of it was a man cutting up a pig. Rowe 
said that it reminded him of the old country, 
and we both decided that it looked like a good 
place to stop for dinner. The man seemed to 
be glad to have us. There were some people 
coming from another ranch, he said, and they 
S6 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. 
That suited me exactly right, and as he was 
having some difficulty cutting up the pig, I 
offered to help him. When we got through 
with that pig he asked me to help him with 
another. 

"Bring on your pig," I said. 

Just as we got that pig cut up the people 
began to come. It proved to be Kavanaugh, 
the very man we were looking for, who had 
ridden over from his ranch with his sister. 

We had our Thanksgiving dinner, all right, 
and a mighty good one it was. 

This was the pleasantest and wildest ride 
that I ever had. I learned something about 
horses. A good, well-fed horse, with a man 
on his back, will outrun any wild horse. I 
think the horse that has been fed has more 
endurance and has been exercised and hard- 
ened to it. Besides, I have an idea that he 
gets something of the spirit of the man who 
rides him. The three wild horses were pretty 
well tired out. One was a smallish black 
horse, and at the end of the chase I saw great 
flakes of white foam fly off from his flanks. I 
had read of that, but had never seen it before. 
6 57 



CHAPTER VII 

WE had many great times together, those 
years we were out in Dakota, and we 
had some real adventures like the kind I 
used to read about when I was a boy. The 
best of them all happened the last year we 
were out there. It was this way. 

Sometime early that spring Dow and I had 
crossed the river and hunted for a while in 
the rough hills to the east, killing four deer 
which we had hung in a tree to prevent the 
coyotes from eating them. We knew that 
Roosevelt was coming out soon and we 
wanted to be prepared with some meat. 

About this time the thaw started to the 
south on the Little Missouri River and cre- 
ated a flood which, as it worked north down 
the river, met with more resistance and thicker 
ice. The flood finally burst through and went 
down the river with the great ice gorge. As 
58 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

the water burst through the channel of the 
stream the ice would pile high until the press- 
ure of the water burst a channel through the 
center, which left the ice piled in abrupt 
walls on either side. It passed by our place 
with a tremendous roar and crash. 

After Roosevelt came out we decided to go 
and get the deer. He went with us. We had 
a small, light boat which we kept for the pur- 
pose of crossing the stream when the water 
was high, as it was impossible to ford it then. 
It was dangerous enough navigating even with 
a small skiff, but we crossed and went to the 
place where the deer were. 

Mountain-lions have no respect for deer 
even if they are hung up, and we discovered 
that they had eaten our meat-supply. Theo- 
dore had his rifle, and we followed the tracks 
for some distance, but the lions, we found, 
had gone to some distance, and as darkness 
was falling we gave up the chase and went 
home. On the way, Theodore stopped at the 
shack of an old hunter who lived on the op- 
posite side of the river from us, and made 
arrangements for the hunter to go out with 
him next day and camp for several days in 
59 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

the neighborhood and see if they could not 
get the lions. 

That night we had a very strong wind 
which blew so hard that it fairly shook the 
timbers of the house. Going out early in the 
morning, I discovered that our boat was gone. 
We had taken it out of the water in the only 
place where we could take it out or put it in, 
on account of the ice that had piled on the 
shore. I knew I had hitched the boat the 
night before, so I didn't see how the water 
could have carried it away. I examined the 
rope and found that it had been cut. Near by 
I found a man's glove at the edge of the 
water. 

I said nothing about this until breakfast- 
time. Theodore was talking all about his 
plans for crossing the stream, and I let him 
talk along, thinking, ' ' Little you know about 
what's been happening." When he was nearly 
through I spoke up quietly, telling him I 
did not think he would get across that 
day. 

He spoke up kind of sharply, wanting to 
know why, 

I told him that we had no boat and ex- 
60 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

plained how the boat had been stolen in the 
night after the wind went down. 

He said we would saddle our horses and 
follow immediately. 

I told him that would be no use. The low 
ground was overflowed in places so that we 
could not get within a mile of the stream, 
and besides that, all that they had to do was 
to keep on the opposite side of the river to 
be safe from us. 

He said that he wanted to do something 
and what could we do? 

I told him I had some boards, and I would 
make a boat and we would follow them. Of 
course, this would take time, but I judged 
that they would feel perfectly safe and would 
be in no hurry, as they knew that there was 
no other boat on the river. Roosevelt sent 
the team to Medora to get provisions and I 
worked on the boat as fast as I could. It 
took me about three days to build that boat. 
When it was made we took what provisions 
we thought that we should need, left Rowe 
in charge of the women-folks, and started off. 

It was a strange, wild, desolate country of 
rough and barren bad lands that we passed 
6i 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

through as we drifted with the current. I 
think there had never been but two parties 
to go down the stream before in boats, and 
one came to a sad end not far below where 
we lived. One of the hunters was killed by a 
grizzly and the other abandoned the voyage. 

We were warned by the old hunter of many 
dangers from bad water in the stream, but 
we were used to such navigation from back 
in Maine and had no great trouble. The cow- 
boys and hunters were mostly bow-legged and 
past-masters at riding, but they were not web- 
footed and used to riding logs and handling 
boats in rough waters the way Dow and I 
were. 

Our progress was very slow and we saw 
many sights strange and unusual to an Eastern 
man. One day as we were passing a very steep, 
high bank, we noticed a great boulder, which 
looked as if it might fall any minute. We had 
scarcely got by it when it did fall in. The 
wave that it created gave our boat a great 
lift, but it did no damage. At another time 
we passed for a long distance between very 
high and steep banks. Up in the bank, per- 
haps seventy-five feet from the water, on one 
62 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

side was a coal vein, which was on fire, and 
flames were issuing from various veins on 
the other bank. I think this continued for 
half a mile at least, and it gave the whole 
country a very strange appearance. One 
could hardly imagine a more desolate region. 
The bare clay hills, cut up with numerous 
washouts, and the brown dry grass, made a 
scene of desolation such as we had never seen 
before. Game was very scarce and we had to 
subsist on the provisions we had brought with 
us. It was several days before we camped at 
a place where game was plenty. We killed 
two deer before breakfast next morning, and 
thought that we were very well supplied then. 
About the third day, sometime in the early 
afternoon, we came to a short turn in the 
stream where the ice had all left the point. 
I was steering the boat and Roosevelt and 
Dow were both in the forward part, talking 
and having a good time. As we turned the 
point I saw the boats of the outlaws hitched 
on the point where the ice had all gone away, 
so that they could get on the shore. There 
were a few small cottonwood-bushes from 
which there arose a little cloud of smoke. 
63 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I said to Roosevelt, "There are the boats!" 

They had taken off their pistols, and I said : 
"(jet your arms on, boys, and get ready. 
When the boat strikes the shore you go into 
the camp as quick as you can get there." I 
was in the stern of the boat, steering, and as 
the current was swift it was quite difficult to 
make the landing. 

Dow and Roosevelt buckled on their pistols, 
grasped their rifles, and sprang to the shore. 
Roosevelt was ahead, Dow pulling the rope 
of the boat as far as he could as he ran. 

I jumped ashore after him, grabbed the 
rope, and hitched the boat. 

I heard Theodore shout, "Put up your 
hands!" By the time that I got to the fire 
everything was quiet. 

An old German, named Christopher Whar- 
finberger, was the only man in the camp. He 
was not at all dangerous. He was an oldish 
man; I don't think he was naturally bad, 
but he drank so much poor whisky that he 
had lost most of the manhood that he ever 
possessed. He offered no resistance, and in 
fact I think he was rather glad to be our 
prisoner. He told us that the other two mem- 
64 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

bers of the thieving party, one a young man 
named Finnegan and the other a half-breed 
named Bernstead, had prevailed on him to 
go with them down to Mandan, telling him 
what a nice, pleasant time they would have 
floating down the water and how he could 
catch a lot of fish, while I really do not think 
there was a fish in the river for them to catch. 
The reason they wanted him was because he 
had a little money and they had none. They 
got him to buy some provisions, and stole 
everything that they had themselves. 

We searched the old man, took his gun and 
his knives from him and told him that if he 
did exactly as he was told we should use him 
well, but if he disobeyed or tried to signal the 
other men we would kill him instantly. He 
believed this and was very humble and sub- 
missive. I think that, as simple as he was, he 
felt safer with us than he did with them, 
which I think was a fact. I think that if 
the men felt that it was to their advantage, 
they would have left him or killed him at any 
time. We told him to keep the fire burning, 
just as he had been doing, and he readily 
promised to do so. 

65 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

We then held a short council of war to de- 
cide just what we were going to do, Theodore 
thought we had better destroy their camp, 
take old Chris, and go along. The two 
younger men being away, he didn't see just 
how we could get them, although he was 
very anxious to do so. 

As I was the oldest man in the party, the 
two younger men looked to me for advice. 
I told them that I thought we could get them. 
"We will remain concealed in the camp, and 
when they come back we'll take them," I 
said. I felt pretty sure they would be back 
at night. Theodore readily agreed to this 
proposal. 

The river, at the place where we were con- 
cealed, had double banks. The water, at the 
present time, flowed in its natural channel, 
but at times, when the water had been higher, 
it had risen above the bank that the camp 
was situated on and cut a wider channel, leav- 
ing a second square bank about five feet high. 

My idea was to hide behind that bank and 
wait the coming of the other two men. They 
would be obliged to come right up in front 
of us, as the river was at our backs. 
66 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Before us, the ground was as level as a 
house floor and for about one hundred yards 
had nothing on it but short dead grass. 
There was no chance for any cover for a man 
on that. Behind it, to the east, lay a wide 
stretch of level bottom covered with sage- 
brush which grew about as high as a man's 
waist. Beyond that was a fringe of bushes, 
growing along the foot of the clay cliff, and 
beyond the bushes were the rough and barren 
"Bad Lands," cut up by numerous gulches 
and watercourses. 

The wind had all gone down, and it was 
very still. You could hear nothing but the 
rush of the river. 

About an hour before sunset we heard the 
men coming, even before they were in sight. 
They were crawling through the stunted 
bushes at the foot of the clay hill. They came 
in sight soon after and started to go up the 
stream. 

Theodore said : " We are going to lose them. 
They are not coming to camp." 

I said: "I think not. I think they are look- 
ing for the camp smoke." 

Suddenly they saw it and came straight 
67 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

toward us through the sage-brush. We allowed 
them to come into the smooth, grassy space 
and when they were about twenty paces from 
us, where there was no possible cover for 
them, we three rose from behind the clay 
bank. 

Theodore commanded them to "hold up." 

The half-breed dropped his gun and threw 
up his hands, but Finnegan, who carried his 
rifle across his left arm, stood evidently un- 
decided. 

Dow snapped out, "Damn you, drop that 
rifle!" 

He seemed to understand that better than 
he did Theodore's pleasant command. He 
told Dow afterward that he was looking to 
see if there was any possible chance and that 
when Dow spoke to him he realized there 
wasn't. 

We then proceeded to search them. They 
were well armed with Winchester rifles, 
Smith & Wesson revolvers, and knives. 
We took all their weapons away from them 
and told them just what we told the old man, 
that if they obeyed orders and made no 
attempt to escape, we should use them well, 
68 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

otherwise we should shoot them instantly. 
That was a kind of a fashion in the country 
and they knew very well what it meant. I 
then took the old double-barrel, ten-gage 
Parker shot-gun down. 

Dow had cautioned me about handling 
this gun when they were coming in. He said 
the right-hand barrel went off very easily and 
that he had discharged it several times when 
he hadn't meant to, and, as he knew that I 
was going to use it to cover the men, he 
cautioned me to be careful. 

I told him I would, but if it happened to 
go off it would make more difference to them 
than it would to me. I hadn't come there to 
be killed, and if anybody was killed, I in^ 
tended it should be them. I then showed 
them the cartridges, told them there were 
sixteen buckshot in each cartridge, and that 
that was what would follow them if they 
made any attempt to escape. 

I then had them gather the wood for the 
night, while I watched over them with the 
old gun. When they had plenty of wood we 
gave them one side of the fire and told them 
to be careful and not come on our side or 
69 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

we would shoot. Of course, they were used 
to guns and had a wholesome dread of a 
double-barrel shot-gun with sixteen buck- 
shot in each barrel. 

Theodore attempted to talk with Finnegan, 
but he was grouchy and inclined to be saucy, 
so we thought the best thing to do with him 
was to let him alone until he felt better. 

I took their shoes away from them that 
night, and put them on our side of the fire. 
The cactuses were pretty thick and I knew 
it wouldn't be pleasant traveling in their 
stocking feet. After they lay down I took the 
old gun and watched them until twelve 
o'clock; then Theodore watched them, with 
the old gun, until morning. The next night 
Dow and I took the watch while Theodore 
slept; so every third night, one of us slept 
all night; the other two, half a night each. 

The next morning after the capture we 
started down-stream. We did not know that 
there was an ice jam ahead, but we soon found 
it ojt. We learned afterward that that was 
what had held up the thieves. We were 
obliged to return to the camp and stay there 
until the ice started down on the river. It 
70 




ROOSEVELT GUARDING FIN^fEGAN AND COMPANY 




DOW AND SEWALL IN THE DUGOUT WITH THE LOOT OF THE THIEVES 

(Photograph by Theodore Roosevelt) 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

was about a week before the ice broke up at 
all. In the mean time our provisions ran short. 
We had nothing but flour left, and no baking- 
powder, and the bread made of the muddy 
water without baking-powder was not very 
palatable. The addition to our crew had 
been hard on the provisions, as the thieves had 
soon eaten all that they had themselves and 
we had had to furnish food for the whole 
party. 

This time we were In a very barren and 
desolate region. Although we hunted some, 
we failed to find any game. After a few days 
it began to look as if we had gotten pretty 
nearly to the end of our provisions of any 
kind. 

We held another council of war. Theodore 
thought we should have to let the thieves go, 
we had so little to eat. He didn't want to 
kill them and he couldn't see what we could 
do but let them go. 

I didn't want to let them go and he really 
didn't, but he could hardly see what we 
could do under the circumstances. The ice 
jam was something we hadn't reckoned on, 
neither had the thieves. However, I thought 
71 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

we could stand it a little longer on what we 
had, and perhaps something would happen. 
It would punish the thieves as badly as us, 
and, as Theodore was always the last man to 
quit, he agreed to my proposal. 

The next day I crossed the river and spent 
the day trying to find a ranch. We knew 
there were some somewhere below us, but we 
didn't know how far. When I came back at 
night I saw a bunch of cattle not far from 
where we were camped. I told my compan- 
ions of my lack of success and we decided that 
Dow and Theodore would go down the stream 
the next day and explore the side we were 
camped on. If they didn't succeed in finding 
a ranch we would kill one of the cattle. They 
took an empty tomato-can, which we hap- 
pened to have, so that if they had to kill 
one of the animals, they could leave word 
saying who did it and why. It was rather 
risky business to kill other folks's cattle. 

They were absent all day, while I stayed at 
the camp and watched the thieves. About 
sunset I saw them coming a long way off 
and could tell that Dow was loaded. They 
had found a ranch and got flour, baking- 
72 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

powder, bacon, sugar, and coffee. We soon 
commenced to prepare the meal, as the 
thieves and I were hungry. Dow and Roose- 
velt had eaten at the ranch and, of course, 
their appetites were not quite so sharp. We 
had a good supper and even the thieves felt 
quite happy. 

Roosevelt had made arrangements with 
the ranchman for us to get a team there, so 
the next morning we started afoot to the 
ranch. We got there about noon and stayed 
there until the next morning ; then we started 
for another ranch, which was about fifteen 
miles farther on. The thieves didn't enjoy 
this walk, but they had to take it, for the 
ranch was the camp of an old frontiersman 
who, we had heard, had a team that we needed 
to take the thieves to the county jail at 
Dickinson. 

We found the teamster a large, powerfully 
built man with a deeply wrinkled, sunburnt, 
tough old face that looked about like the 
instep of an old boot that had lain out in the 
weather for years; but he was a good man 
for the job. When we arrived at his camp he 
stepped up to Finnegan and held out his 

7 73 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

hand to shake hands with him. As he did 
so, he said, "Finnegan, you damned thief, 
what have you been doing now?" 

It was evident that he knew the man. 

Finnegan told him he had been acting out 
the fool again. He seemed to be disgusted 
with himself a good deal of the time. At one 
time I saw him kick an old tin can and, ask- 
ing him what he did it for, he told me that he 
did it because he couldn't kick himself. 

Shortly after meeting Finnegan, the old 
man said to me: "I know that fellow. He 
was always a damn' thief. I had him in my 
care once for nine months with a ball and 
chain hitched to his foot." 

Roosevelt took the thieves to town and de- 
livered them to the sheriff, who took them 
before the magistrate. Theodore made no 
complaint against old Chris. He told the 
magistrate that he was that "kind of a person 
who was not capable of doing either much 
good or much harm," whereupon old Chris 
thanked him very fervently. Roosevelt said 
that that was the first time he ever had a 
man thank him for calling him a fool. 

The other two men were bound over to the 
74 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

September term of court and had their trial 
the next fall. They got twenty-five months 
and were still in jail when we came home. 
After my return East I received a letter from 
one of the neighbors in the "Bad Lands," who 
told me that after Finnegan got out of jail 
he went up into Montana and went to steal- 
ing horses. He was hung there as a horse- 
thief. I heard then that he was quite a noted 
thief and rather a careless man with firearms. 
Just before he stole the boat they had him 
down to Mandan on account of a shooting- 
affair. He had got drunk in town and had 
discharged his rifle. The bullet went through 
the walls of a building. It happened that 
the man occupying this building was the 
editor of a little paper. The bullet passed 
under the man's chin and, as he had quite 
long whiskers, cut part of them off. The 
editor was rather unreasonable and didn't 
like to have his whiskers trimmed that way. 
He objected so strongly, in fact, that Finne- 
gan was arrested and taken to Mandan. The 
magistrate decided that it was only a drunken 
accident, and, as there was nothing hit but 
whiskers, concluded to let him go. 
75 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE morning that Theodore started to 
Dickinson with the thieves, Dow and I 
started back to the ranch we had left the 
day before. We stayed there that night and 
went back to where we had left the boats the 
next day. By this time the ice was gone, so 
we went back to the ranch that night, gave 
the ranchman one of the boats, took the 
one that I had made and our own little boat 
and started down the river. 

We then took an inventory of the outfit 
that the thieves had left. They had entered 
every ranch on the river, where the owners 
happened to be away, and helped themselves. 
They had three sacks full of books, maga- 
zines, and papers'; they had all kinds of read- 
ing. There was everything in those sacks but 
Bibles. I don't remember seeing any of them. 
They also had deer heads mounted, sheep 
76 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

heads and everything that they thought they 
could sell. 

We now had a long stretch of river before 
us and an uninhabited country, with only 
a ranch here and there. We had gotten rid 
of the thieves and, although we had lost 
Theodore and were sorry that he had to go 
alone, we felt greatly relieved ourselves. We 
now planned to have some sport. We w^re 
beginning to see ducks and wild geese, and 
hoped that we might see larger game. We 
had quite a long distance to go on the Little 
Missouri River before we got into the Big 
Missouri and had to go through the Gros- 
ventre Reservation. While there was a strong 
current in the stream, the stream was so 
crooked that we often were going against 
the wind, which made our progress very 
slow at times. 

One afternoon Dow called my attention 
to something on the top of a high, grassy hill. 
It looked, in the distance, like a small spruce- 
bush, but I knew there was no spruce in 
that country. He asked me what I thought 
it was, and I told him I thought it was an 
Indian with a blanket on. He took the glass 
77 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

and looked and said that that was just what 
it was. 

He said, "What do you suppose the fool 
is doing there?" 

I said, "I suppose he is watching us." 

There was a large bend in the river and he 
was in sight a long while, but we never could 
see that he moved or changed his position a 
mite. About the time we were getting past 
him two wild geese came flying up the stream. 
Dow, who was the nearest to a dead shot to 
any man I have ever known, caught up his 
gun and shot them both down. The next 
bend we went around we saw quite a party 
of Indians on the shore. They had heard 
the shooting and had run down to the shore 
with their guns. 

We didn't want them to think we were 
afraid of them, so we landed and tried to talk 
with them. We didn't succeed in talking very 
much. They made us understand that they 
wanted us to go to their camp with them, 
which was back from the river a piece, as 
it was near night; but we didn't wish to go 
to an Indian camp and stay all night, as there 
are always too many uninvited guests there. 
78 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

About the only thing the Indians could 
say was "Shug." They all wanted sugar. 
We had a great plenty, so I took a dipper 
and dipped out a pint, while an old fellow 
came with his old black hat, which looked 
as though it might be about as old as the 
Indian. I dumped the sugar into it. Another 
one came with what was once a red cotton 
handkerchief. As it probably never had been 
washed since it was bought from the trader, 
I was not really sure what it was. However, 
I dumped the pint of sugar in it. Dow gave 
them one of the pigeon-tailed duck he had 
shot and we went on our way. 

After we had gone several miles we went 
ashore to camp on the opposite side of the 
river. As the Indians didn't appear to have 
any boats, we thought they weren't likely 
to be across. That night, which was quite 
dark, they had fires on the tops of the 
high hills. We didn't know what that meant, 
but we felt sure they were signal-fires. 

We had our breakfast early next morning. 

We saw nothing of the Indians. We saw some 

white men with whom we tried to talk, but 

they were evidently afraid of us. When we 

79 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

started to go toward them to land, they 
went in the opposite direction and we made 
no further attempt to converse with them. 
We were now getting down pretty near the 
Big Missouri River. If I remember right, we 
got out into it the next day. It is a hundred 
and twenty-five miles from the mouth of the 
Little Missouri to Mandan. That day we 
saw great quantities of geese. At one time 
there must have been thousands on a gravel 
bar in the middle of the river. The current 
was very rapid and as we approached them 
great sections would rise. The air seemed to 
be full of geese and their wings made a noise 
like a great wind. 

That night we camped opposite a small 
village. The wind was bothering us and we 
stopped early and went over to town and 
bought some provisions. They told us at 
this place that it was eighty miles from there 
to Mandan, by the state road. The next 
morning we started very early with a swift 
current and a high wind. 

That morning we came to a place where 
there was a short turn and where the river 
narrowed so that the current was very strong. 
80 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

We were mailing rapid progress and when 
we came around the short turn the wind 
was blowing straight up-stream. Where the 
swift current and the strong wind met it 
made the water very rough. We were in 
about the middle of the stream and there 
was no way to avoid it. 

I said to Dow, "That looks pretty saucy." 
He said he thought if we laid our boat 
about right she would weather it, and she 
did. The wave, right where the water and 
wind met, stood almost square up and down. 
When the boat went into that we took in 
water, but we came through. That was the 
only place where we found rough water. 
After that the course of the river was very 
straight. The current was swift and there 
was a strong wind blowing down-stream. 
We went sometimes almost faster than we 
cared to, and the water was so roily that we 
could not see anything under the water and 
the only way we could judge the depth was 
by the swirl of the current. There were a 
great many snags, but very few stones and 
rocks. 
That was the swiftest run that I have ever 
8i 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

had for a long distance. If it was eighty- 
miles by the state road, it must have been 
a good deal more by the river, and we made 
Mandan about four o'clock in the afternoon. 
There we delivered up the plunder that the 
thieves had stolen, also their rifles, pistols, and 
knives. We gave the boat that I made to 
come down the river to a man with whom we 
stopped that night and who hauled our other 
boat to the station for us the next morning. 
Then we took the train for Medora. 

There was a dining-car on the train at noon 
and we went in to get our dinner. I suppose 
we were about as tough a looking pair as they 
ever get in a dining-car. We had been camp- 
ing along the muddy banks of the Little 
Missouri for three weeks and, of course, our 
clothes were badly soiled, to say nothing 
about the condition of what they covered. 
The colored man brought us a bill of fare. 
I told him we didn't want the bill of fare, but 
something to eat, as we hadn't had anything 
for three weeks and wanted him to bring all 
he had. 

He looked at us a minute and said: "I 
know you fellows. I have seen you with Mr. 
82 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Roosevelt. I will get you a good dinner.** 
He did get us a good dinner, the best I have 
ever had on a dining-car. 

We arrived at Medora that night, and the 
next morning put our boat into the Little 
Missouri and started for our ranch. Roosevelt 
had gotten back several days ahead of us. 
When he got back the cattlemen wanted to 
know how he made it. He told them what he 
had done and they told him he was a damn 
fool for bothering so much with those fellows. 
They said the thieves would have killed him 
if they had got the chance, and wanted to 
know why he didn't kill them. No doubt 
they would have killed him, too. 

Theodore said that he hadn't gone out 
there to kill anybody, but all he intended to 
do was to defend himself. If there wasn't 
anybody else to defend him, he intended to 
protect himself. 

It was thirty miles from Medora to our 
ranch by the trail. We had to cross the 
river twenty-two times, which shows that 
the river was very crooked. It was probably 
nearly sixty miles by the stream. Dow and 
I hurried down the stream as fast as possible, 
83 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

but some places the water had gotten low, 
as the stream falls as rapidly as it rises, and 
we had to get out in places in order to get by 
the sand-bars. It was somewhere near eleven 
o'clock when we arrived near the ranch. 
Everybody was asleep, the fires were all out, 
and we were wet and cold, besides being hun- 
gry. It was not long before there was a com- 
motion in the house and something to eat was 
forthcoming. That good dinner that we had 
on the train had gotten very lonesome. 

This had been a trip that we had all en- 
joyed. There had been a good deal of hard 
work connected with it; some parts had 
been very pleasant and some very unpleasant. 
It had been a very cold, barren time, for one 
thing. It was too early for the leaves and 
grass to be started much, and the weather 
had been so cold, part of the time, that it 
had filled the stream with anchor ice. Still, 
we were all foolish enough to enjoy most of 
it, after all, and looked back to it with pleasure 
and satisfaction. It had been quite an anxious 
time for our wives. The old hunter who 
lived near us used to go down to inquire for 
us almost every day, and while he had tried 
84 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

to make it appear that there was nothing 
unusual about his calls, our wives knew he 
was worried. 

I was glad when I realized that the expe- 
dition had come to a successful termination. 
I was the oldest man in the party, and the 
two younger men looked to me for advice and 
were always ready to do as I said, thinking 
that what I thought was probably best. I 
felt a good deal of responsibility. The young 
men were perfectly fearless and not afraid to 
face anything. They were both of a kind and 
generous disposition. I had one of the best 
chances to know the real Theodore Roosevelt 
on this expedition. As the Indians say, "We 
ate out of the same dish and slept under the 
same blanket." 



CHAPTER IX 

'T'HAT autumn Theodore decided to go on 
■'- an elk-hunt, and asked me to go with 
him. 

We had been told that elk had been seen 
on the west side of the divide between the 
Yellowstone and the Little Missouri River, 
and Roosevelt decided to go after them. He 
employed the old hunter, who lived about 
three miles from us, to go as a guide; a 
thorough hunter he was, too, who knew more 
about game and their habits than any man I 
had ever met. Tompkins was his name. 

He told Roosevelt if there were any elk 
around there he could find them. 

Roosevelt told him if he did he would 
give him fifty dollars. 

So we started for the elk land. Tompkins 
drove the wagon which carried our outfit. 
We traveled light, but in some places it was 
86 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

all the four horses could do to haul the load, 
the hills that we climbed were so steep. 

We struck from the Little Missouri west 
toward the Yellowstone. As we began to 
get to the height of the land, Tompkins pro- 
tested. * ' We are going wrong, ' ' he said. * ' If 
there are any elk in the country they'll be on 
the Little Missouri side." 

But Roosevelt had been told they were on 
the other side. He said he would go ahead 
and hunt there first and if we didn't find them 
there we could come back and try the other 
side. 

We camped that night at a place called 
Indian Spring, near the top of the divide 
between the Yellowstone and the Little 
Missouri River, and the next day hunted on 
the slope next to the Yellowstone; but 
though we found old signs of the elk, we 
came on no fresh ones. The next morning 
we had a heavy thunder-shower that kept 
us in our tents until nearly noon. Then 
the weather cleared off, and the sun came 
out very bright and beautiful. 

Tompkins said it was too late to go to the 
Yellowstone that day. "Let's hunt back 
87 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

toward the Little Missouri," he said. "If 
there are any elk in the country that is the 
place for them." The old fellow knew as 
soon as he ran his eye over the country where 
to hunt. 

That afternoon we hunted on the slope 
toward the Little Missouri. Deer were 
plentiful. Toward night I found a track of 
a different sort. I was a younger man than 
Tompkins and perhaps my eyes were sharper. 
I called the old man and he said it was an 
elk-track. Of course, it was very fresh, as it 
had showered heavily in the forenoon. 

We went home, and returned to the place 
early next morning to hunt the elk, but the 
track went into hard ground and we couldn't 
follow it. We divided then, Tompkins and 
Roosevelt going together, and I going by 
myself. 

I found the fresh track of a grizzly that 
had been made the night before or that 
morning, and tried to follow it, but that also 
went into the hard ground and I lost it. 
While I was hunting for tracks I chanced to 
run on to a den where the grizzly had been 
the winter before. I had never seen a grizzly 
88 



BILL SEW ALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

den, but, judging by the quantity of earth 
dug from the mouth of it, I supposed this 
must be one. 

In that pile of dug-out earth was a fresh 
elk-track. 

I called the hunter and Roosevelt. Tomp- 
kins agreed that it was an elk-track and said 
that the elk was making for the top of the 
divide. 

We rode as he directed, and, sure enough, 
on the top of the divide we found the track 
again. 

The old man surveyed the country. "The 
elk has gone over the divide and is heading 
for the timber," he said. After looking the 
country over he examined the tracks, which 
were quite plain here. ' 'He's heading for that 
bunch of timber," he said, pointing to a 
patch of woods about a mile ahead. "We'll 
find him there." 

He told Roosevelt to keep to the south and 
get around on the southeast side of the 
timber; then he and I would work down 
from the west and north. The elk would run 
with the wind, he guessed, and would prob- 
ably run near Roosevelt. 

8 89 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I went to the north, up on a high point of 
clay where I could see down into the timber 
and get a pretty good view. I discovered the 
elk lying down near the middle of the timber, 
very near Roosevelt, but he couldn't see 
him from where he was. Soon after the 
hunter got his eye on the elk he beckoned 
Roosevelt to him. Theodore crept forward 
and fired. The elk jumped up and started 
off. Roosevelt fired two more shots at him 
and he fell. 

We dressed the elk, fixed it as well as 
we could, and returned to camp. There we 
found Dow with a telegram. Roosevelt was 
wanted at home. 

Next morning we went with the team and 
fetched the elk, and the day following re- 
turned to the ranch. We divided the elk with 
Tompkins and made out to take care of the 
rest of it ourselves. 

Roosevelt was obliged to leave for the East 
almost immediately, and never had a bite of 
the meat. I thought he missed a lot. It was 
the only elk meat I ever ate and I'll say that 
I never ate better steak. 

While Theodore was in the East two boy 
90 




ELKHORN RANCH-HOUSE 




COWPUNCHERS CONNECTED WITH THE ROOSEVELT OUTFIT 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

babies were born, one to my wife and one 
to Mrs. Dow. There was only a week's 
difference in the ages. We were a hundred 
and ten miles from the nearest physician. 
The only help we could get was the wife 
of an old hunter who lived several miles from 
us. My wife was terribly sick. The only 
reason they did not both die was because 
their time had not come. But both the 
women lived, and are still aHve, and the 
boys lived to make strong men. 

Theodore, when he came back to the ranch, 
about three days after the babies were born, 
found me making a cradle large enough to 
hold both babies. He thought I was making 
too much noise; thought I ought to be more 
quiet about my work. I told him the noise 
would be good for them. He laughed about 
that and told that story as long as he lived. 

That autumn Roosevelt went for a hunt- 
ing - trip after white goats in the Coeur 
d'Al^ne Mountains in western Idaho. Dow 
and I, meanwhile, gathered up the cattle that 
were ready for the market and Dow went 
to Chicago and sold them. It turned out that 
we didn't get as much for them as we had 
91 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

paid, to say nothing of the trouble and ex- 
pense of keeping them. 

When Dow got back we figured things over 
and made up our minds that if Roosevelt was 
willing, the quicker we all got out of there 
the less money he would lose. We didn't 
have any to lose; we were safe enough; but 
he did. We felt a little diffident about saying 
anything about it to him, because the trade 
he had made with us was altogether a one- 
sided affair; but it looked to me as if we 
were throwing away his money, and I didn't 
like it. 

So when he got back from the hunt I told 
him about the cattle and what they had 
brought. He started figuring and told me he 
wanted to have a talk with me. I misdoubted 
what was coming. So I went into his room 
and he told me that he had figured it out and 
he told me the conclusion he had arrived at. 
I told him that Dow and I had figured it up 
and we had arrived at the same conclusion 
exactly — the quicker he got out of there the 
less he would lose. 

He never was a man to hesitate about 
making a decision when he had all of the 
92 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

facts in hand. He was never afraid of facts 
and of drawing the consequences from them. 
He said, "How soon can you go?" 

I went in to see the women and they said 
they could not get ready under ten days. I 
went back in to Roosevelt and told him that 
we would start ten days from that day. 

Theodore left one day ahead of us, and 
the day before he left he and I went out on 
the prairie and had a talk. We were very 
close in those days and he talked over about 
everything with me. His ideas and mine 
always seemed to run about the same. 

This day he asked me what I thought he 
had better do — whether he had better go into 
poHtics or law. I told him that he would 
make a good lawyer, but I should advise him 
to go into politics because such men as he 
didn't go into politics and they were needed 
in politics. 

I said, "If you do go into politics and live, 
your chance to be President is good." 

He threw back his head and laughed and 
said: "Bill, you have a good deal more faith 
in me than I have in myself. That looks a 
long ways ahead for me." 
93 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I said : " It may be a long ways ahead, but 
it is not so far ahead of you as it has been of 
men that got there. Of course, you have got 
a better start. You have health and influen- 
tial friends. You are not all by yourself. You 
have a good education and a good head. You 
have got a better start than a good many 
have that have got there." 

He told me then that he was going home 
to see about taking a position that had been 
offered to him. He said it was a job that he 
didn't want. It would take him into no end 
of a row, he said, into a row all of the time, 
and it would not pay because he could make 
more by writing ; but he said he could do a 
great deal of good in it. 

I heard afterward that what he referred 
to was the nomination for mayor of New 
York. 

The day after I had my talk with him on 
the prairie he went East, and a day after that 
Dow and I with our families started back to 
Maine. Our wives each had a new baby born 
within a week of each other, called then and 
ever since, even after they were grown up, 
the "Bad Lands Babies." We were glad to 
94 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

get back home — gladder, I guess, than about 
anything that had ever happened to us, and 
yet we were melancholy, for with all of the 
hardships and work it was a very happy Hfe 
we had lived all together. I guess we have 
all thought all our lives since that it was the 
happiest time that any of us have known 



CHAPTER X 

WHEN Dow and I decided to come back 
home Roosevelt loaned the cattle to 
Merrifield and the Ferrises from whom he had 
originally bought Chimney Butte Ranch. 
They were to have half of the cattle for the 
raising and he was to have half. The 
winter after we left was the worst that 
had ever been known in that region. 
The snow was two feet deep and the 
cattle died by thousands and thousands. 
Fifty per cent, of Roosevelt's herd was lost 
and I dare say that it was more than fifty 
per cent. I do not think that he ever 
got anything out of the cattle. I do not be- 
lieve the men who took care of them for him 
ever got anything out of their half. It must 
have cost all that the cattle were worth to 
gather up and run them. 

I had a letter from Theodore about it 
next spring. "The loss among the cattle," 
96 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

he wrote, "has been terrible. About the only 
comfort I have out of it is that you and 
Wilmot are all right. Sometime I hope to 
get a chance to come up and see you all ; then 
I shall forget my troubles when we go into 
the woods for caribou and moose." 

He went West shortly after to look at 
things for himself, and when he came back 
he wrote me about it. He had just moved 
into his house at Sagamore Hill and he wrote 
me from there : 

You cannot imagine anything more dreary than 
the look of the Bad Lands when I went out there. 
Everything was cropped as bare as a bone. The sage- 
brush was just fed out by the starving cattle. The 
snow lay so deep that nobody could get around; it 
was almost impossible to get a horse a mile. 

In almost every coulee there were dead cattle. 
There were nearly three hundred on Wadsworth bottom. 
Annie came through all right; Angus died. Only one 
or two of our horses died; but the 0-K lost sixty head. 
In one of ISlunro's draws I counted in a single patch of 
brushwood twenty -three dead cows and calves. 

The losses are immense; the only ray of comfort is 
that I hear the grass is very good this summer. You 
boys were lucky to get out when you did; if you had 
waited until spring, I guess it would have been a case 
of walking. 

Please sign the inclosed paper. It is for the wit- 
ness fee of Finnegan & Co. 
97 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

I did not see Roosevelt for many years 
after that, not for sixteen years — but I kept 
hearing from him frequently. He used to 
tell me about his hunting expeditions and how 
the cattle were getting on. They didn't get 
on very well, I guess. I have every letter he 
wrote me. 

After the presidential election in 1888 I 
got this letter from him : 

Oyster Bay, 
Nov. 17, 1888. 

I am feeling pretty happy over the election just now. 
I rather enjoy going to call on my various mug- 
wump friends. I took a friend and went up in the North 
Rockies, to the Kootenai Lake country, this fall, 
on a shooting-trip. It was awfully hard work. We 
went on foot with packs. After a week of it my 
friend played out completely; he had to go back, 
with Merrifield, and did not get anything at all. I 
kept on, with a white man and an Indian; after a 
while I got some pretty fair hunting; among other 
things I killed a big black bear and a fine bull cari- 
bou. I saw Blaine the other day and had a pleasant 
talk with him. 

A year later he went out West again, and 
when he got back he wrote me about it : 

Oct. 13, 1889. 
I went over into the Idaho country and had very 
good luck; among other things I killed a panther, two 
98 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

bull moose, and two grizzlies; one of the last made a 
most determined charge, but I stopped him with the 
old Winchester. I still keep the Elkhom ranch-house 
open, but will probably close it for good next year.^ I 
am picking up a little in the cattle business, branding 
a slightly larger number of calves each year, and put- 
ting back a few thousand dollars into my capital; but 
I shall never make good my losses. 

He used to write me something of his Hfe 
in Washington as Civil Service Commissioner, 
and of the men in Congress from my state; 
he knew I would be interested. On February 
25, 1 89 1, he wrote me from Washington: 

I have seen a great deal of Tom Reed this winter, 
and my hking for him has grown. He is a very strong 
man, and has done more to help along pubUc business 
than any Speaker I have ever known. I like Boutelle, 
too, and Frye and Dingley. I have also seen very much 
of Blaine. He is certainly a very shrewd and able man 
and he has been most hospitable to me. All the Maine 
delegation are pretty bright men, which is more than 
can be said for New York with its large Tammany Hall 
contingent. 

Wilmot Dow died that spring. Theodore 
had been mighty fond of him. He wrote me 
how sorry he was: 

I cannot realize that he, so lusty and powerful and 
healthy, can have gone. You know how highly I 
99 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

esteemed Wilmot. He was one of the men whom I 
felt proud to have as a friend and he has left his children 
the name of an upright and honorable man who played 
his part manfully in the world. His sincerity and 
strength of character, his courage, his gentleness to 
his wife, his loyalty to his friends, all made him one 
whose loss must be greatly mourned by whoever had 
had the good fortune to be thrown intimately with 
him; to his wife and children, and to you, his loss is 
irreparable. May we all do our duty as straight- 
forwardly and well as he did his. 

That was in May. In August he wrote 
again, telHng me about the birth of his daugh- 
ter EtheL He was still full of thoughts of 
Will Dow. 

I think of Wilmot all the time; I can see him riding 
a bucker, or paddling a canoe, or shooting an antelope; 
or doing the washing for his wife, or playing with the 
children. If ever there was a fine, noble fellow, he 
was one. 

I did not hear from him again for a year 
after that. But in the fall of 1892 he went 
West again and he knew I would be inter- 
ested in how he found things out there, so 
he wrote me about it: 

I spent three weeks out West this year; first at my 
ranch, and then on a wagon trip down to the Black 
Hills, during the course of which I shot a few ante- 
100 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

lope. My cattle are doing a little better than they were. 
The ranch-house is in good repair, but of course it is 
melancholy to see it deserted; I stayed there several 
days. One morning, as I was sitting on the piazza, I 
heard a splashing in the river (nearly where Bill Rowe 
drowned Cropears) and there were three deer! They 
walked up along the sand to the crossing; and I picked 
up my rifle, leaned against one of the big cottonwoods, 
and dropped one in its tracks. We were out of meat 
and the venison tasted first rate. I never expected to 
shoot a deer from the piazza. 

He was having a pretty difficult time on 
the Civil Service Commission about this time 
with the people who didn't believe in civil 
service reform and wanted their friends 
appointed to office by the old spoils system 
that Roosevelt was trying to put out of 
business. Every little while one of the rows 
he was having would get into the papers. I 
wrote him once telling him that I was glad 
he was keeping in fighting trim and I got 
this letter back from him : 

Washington, 
Dec. 28, i8gj. 

Yes, I did have a savage time of it with that unrecon- 
structed rebel. He was a real type of the fire-eater; 
he always went armed with a revolver and was always 
bullying and threatening and talking about his deeds 
as a General in the War, and "his people " the Southem- 

lOI 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

ers, and "his party" the Democrats. He was a big 
fellow, and once or twice I wished I had your thews; 
but as I had not, I resolved to do what I could with 
my own if it came to a rough and tumble. However, he 
was like the Marquis, that time he wrote me the note 
when we were aU at the ranch. After he had carried 
his bullying to a certain point I brought him up with a 
round turn, and when he threatened I told him to go 
right ahead, that I was no brawler, but that I was always 
ready to defend myself in any way, and that, moreover, 
I could guarantee to do it, too. Then he backed off. I 
was always having difficulties with him as he was an 
inveterate hater of Republicans in general, of North- 
erners and especially of negroes. However, I finally 
drove him off the Commission; and before this hap- 
pened had reduced him to absolute impotence on the 
Commission, save that he could still be a temporary 
obstructionist. I am well, though I don't get any 
exercise now; and this has been a very hard business 
year. 

When the Spanish War came I was one of 
those who thought he had no business him- 
self to go to war. I never was a pacifist 
in my Hfe any more than he was. Neither of 
us wanted to pick a quarrel, but when a quar- 
rel came we weren't the men to dodge it. 
It seemed to me, however, that it wasn't 
his place to go to Cuba. I thought he had 
more important work to do in the Navy De- 
partment and I wrote him so. I never ex- 

I03 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R, 

pected him to answer my letter. The Navy 
Department was a pretty busy place at that 
time. I knew that well enough and I doubted 
whether my letter would even ever reach 
him. But his answer came just as quick as 
the mails could carry it, and was written on 
April 23, 1898, the very day that Congress 
declared war. Here is the letter: 

Navy Dept., Washington. 
I thank you for your advice, old man, but it seems 
to me that if I can go I better had. My work here has 
been the work of preparing the tools. They are pre- 
pared, and now the work must lie with those who use 
them. The work of preparation is done; the work of 
using the tools has begun. If possible I would like to 
be one of those who use the tools. 

Well, he was one of those who used the 
tools, and pretty soon everybody all over 
the country knew how well he had used them. 
I never doubted that he would make a good 
soldier. He would have made good at pretty 
nearly anything, except, perhaps, as a money- 
maker, and he would have made good at that, 
too, if he had ever cared to put his mind to it. 

The first thing I knew I was writing to a 
man who was Governor of New York. We 
corresponded quite a good deal those years. 
103 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

He seemed to be interested in getting my 
point of view on things, and it happened 
that we always agreed on the fundamental 
things, just as we had agreed when we were 
in Maine and Dakota together. Separation 
didn't seem to make any difference. I hadn't 
seen Theodore for twelve years, but our 
minds seemed to run just like a team. 

Two weeks after he was inaugurated as 
governor he wrote me: 

Albany, 
Jan. i8, i8gg. 

What you say about the reformers is exactly true. 
People like to talk about reform, but they don't want 
to give one hoiur's work or five cents' worth of time. 
They would much rather sit at home and grumble at 
the men who really do do the work, because these men, 
like all other men, are sure to make mistakes sometimes. 

I have had a pretty busy year, but I have enjoyed 
it all and I am proud of being governor and am going 
to try and make a square and decent one. I do not 
expect, however, to hold political office again, and in 
one way that is a help, because the politicians cannot 
threaten me with what they will do in the future. 

Six months later I heard from him again: 

Oyster Bay, 
July 8, i8gg. 
You are right about the courage needed in a position 
like this being quite as much if not more than that 
104 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

needed at San Juan Hill, The trouble is that right and 
wrong so often do not come up sharply divided. If 
I am sure a thing is either right or wrong, why then I 
know how to act, but lots of times there is a little of 
both on each side, and then it becomes mighty puz- 
zling to know the exact course to follow. 

In the spring of 1900 I wrote him about the 

Boer War, saying that my sympathies were 

rather with the British, and I received this 

letter : 

Albany, 
April 24, I goo. 

As to the Boer War, you have hit my opinion aknost 
exactly. The British behaved so well to us during the 
Spanish War that I have no patience with these people 
who keep howling against them. I was mighty glad 
to see them conquer the Mahdi for the same reason 
that I think we should conquer Aguinaldo. The Sudan 
and Matabeleland will be better off under England's 
rule, just as the Philippines will be under our rule. But 
as against the Boers, I think the policy of Rhodes and 
Chamberlain has been one huge blunder, and exactly 
as you say, the British have won only by crushing 
superiority in numbers where they have won at all. 
Generally they have been completely outfought, while 
some of their blunders have been simply stupendous. 
Now of course I think it would be a great deal better 
if all the white people of South Africa spoke English, 
and if my Dutch kinsfolk over there grew to accept 
English as their language just as my people and I here 
have done, they would be a great deal better off. The 

9. 105 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

more I have looked into this Boer War the more tm- 
comfortable I have felt about it. Of course, this is for 
your eyes only. I do not want to mix in things which 
do not concern me, and I have no patience with the 
Senators and Representatives that attend anti-British 
meetings and howl about England. I notice that they 
are generally men that sympathized with Spain two 
years ago. 



CHAPTER XI 

I DID not see Theodore for sixteen years 
altogether and when I saw him again he 
was President of the United States. 

It was shortly after McKinley was assas- 
sinated. He was to come to Bangor to speak. 
I did not write to him; I made up my mind 
that I would be there. I suppose he knew 
that I would be there, just the same as I 
knew that he would be looking for me. When 
he came into the state he began to inquire 
for me. I went to the Bangor House and the 
Congressman from my district was there 
and asked me if I was not going down to 
meet the President's train. 

I told him no, there was no use of my going 
down there. I said, "I want to see Roosevelt. 
If I go down there, I shall not be able to, 
there will be so many of you fellows around 
him." So I told him, "If he inquires for me, 
107 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

you will know where I am; I'm going to be 
right here." 

When he arrived at the hotel they had 
dinner prepared there and they wanted him 
to go up before dinner and make a speech 
from the balcony. He said he would, but 
when he stepped out on the balcony he said 
to the crowd that was gathered below that 
before he started with a speech he wanted 
to act the part of town-crier; he wanted to 
know if there was anybody there who knew 
Bill Sewall and knew whether he was there 
that day or not. There was somebody in 
the neighborhood who did know me, a man 
who boarded with me, and the Congressman 
told him that he knew where I was. 

This man came in to where I was and told 
me that I had been called for and that I 
was wanted for dinner. 

Theodore finished his speech and then in 
a little room next to the dining-room he met 
us alone, my wife and myself and Will Dow's 
wife, who had married again and was there 
with her husband, Fleetwood Pride. We 
talked over the ranch days and it was just 
as though we were back there again together. 
1 08 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

He had to make another speech at a town 
near by that afternoon and he took me along 
with him. We had quite a Httle talk on the 
way. 

I said to him, "Do you remember what I 
told you when you were in Dakota?" 

He said: "Yes. How strange that you 
knew it!" 

I said: "It was not strange to me. I did 
not expect to see you made President this 
way." I said: "I did not suppose you would 
be shot into the Presidency, but I expected to 
see you President in a different manner, and 
I expect to yet. We will do that next time." 

While he was at Bangor Theodore ittvited 
me to come to the White House during the 
coming winter and bring my family and my 
two brothers and their families and Mrs. 
Pride and her husband. I reckoned it up at 
the time; I think he asked twenty-five of us 
all in all. He said, "We'll all break bread in 
the White House." 

Less than a week later I had a letter from 
him thanking my wife and Mrs. Pride for 
some hunting socks that they had knitted 
for him and then saying: 
109 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Now on Jan'y 22nd we have the Judicial reception 
and on February 5 the Congressional reception. I 
would like to have you come down here the day before 
one of these two days. I think the Congressional re- 
ception you would probably enjoy most. If you like, I 
will have quarters engaged for you either at a particular 
house or hotel as you tell me to do. Then I will have 
Franklin Hall, who acts as messenger for me, meet you 
at the train when you tell me the train you wiU come 
by, and take you first to your quarters and then up to 
the White House; and I shall have him detailed to 
show you all around the sights here while you are in 
town. I look forward to seeing all of you. 

The letter was typewritten, but under it, 
in his own hand, he wrote: ''Come sure. 
We'll have a celebration. Your friend, 
Theodore Roosevelt." 

My brothers, being very old, could not go, 
but my wife and myself, with our two older 
children and Mr. and Mrs. Pride and their 
son, went. 

We went to our boarding-place as he had 
directed, and then we went to the White 
House. He was not there when we arrived, 
for it was in the afternoon and he was out 
riding. By and by we heard a door open, then 
we heard his quick step in the hall, and it 
was for all the world like the way he used 
no 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

to come down the long hall at Elkhorn 
Ranch; and when he came into the room in 
his riding-clothes it seemed as though these 
sixteen years that lay between had never 
been and we were all back in the happy 
ranch days again. 

He took us all over the White House that 
afternoon. 

"How do you like it, Bill?" he asked me. 

"Why," I said, "it looks to me as how 
you've got a pretty good camp." 

"It's always a good thing to have a good 
camp," he said. 

Mrs. Roosevelt kind of took the manage- 
ment of us while we were in town and looked 
to it that we saw Mount Vernon and all the 
other sights. I guess we had as fine a time 
as anybody that ever came to Washington, 
and when we seemed to attract a good deal 
of attention, sitting in the President's box 
at the theater, I told the ladies, who were 
rather bothered by it, that it was perfectly 
natural — the people had found something 
green from the country. 

I saw him once or twice again during his 
Presidency, at the White House and at 
III 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Oyster Bay, and every little while out of 
the midst of the fight he was in he would 
send me a letter telling me something about 
it. Here is one of them, written on September 
22, 1903: 

Sometimes I feel a little melancholy because it is 
so hard to persuade people to accept equal justice. 
The very rich corporation people are sore and angry 
because I refuse to allow a case like that of the Northern 
Securities Company to go unchallenged by the law; 
and in the same way the turbulent and extreme labor 
union people are sore and angry because I insist that 
every man, whether he belong to a labor union or not, 
shall be given a square deal in government employment. 
Now, I believe in rich people who act squarely, and in 
labor unions which are managed with wisdom and jus- 
tice; but when either employee or employer, laboring 
man or capitaUst, goes wrong, I have to clinch him, and 
that is all there is to it. 

In the spring of 1906 I wrote him telling 
him what a fine job I thought he was doing 
in Washington. This was his answer: 

June I J, igo6. 
I am mighty glad you like what I have been doing 
in the governmental field. I do not have to tell you that 
my great hero is Abraham Lincoln, and I have wanted 
while President to be the representative of the "plain 
people" in the same sense that he was — not, of coxirse, 
112 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

with the genius and power that he had, but, according 
to my lights, along the same Unes. 

Just after the Republican Convention in 
Chicago that nominated Taft in 1908 he 
wrote me again : 

June 25, igo8. 

I hope Mrs. Roosevelt will be better now, when the 
strain of the Presidency is off her. As for me, I have 
thoroughly enjoyed the job. I never felt more vigorous, 
so far as the work of the office is concerned, and if I 
had followed my own desires I should have been only 
too delighted to stay as President. I had said that I 
would not accept another term, and I believe the people 
think that my word is good, and I should be mighty 
sorry to have them think anything else. However, for 
the very reason that I beUeve in being a strong Presi- 
dent and making the most of the office and using it 
without regard to the little, feeble, snarUng men who 
yell about executive usurpation, I also believe that it 
is not a good thing that any one man should hold it 
too long. My ambition is, in however humble a manner 
and however far off, to travel in the footsteps of Wash- 
ington and Lincoln. 

I think he did travel in the footsteps of 
Washington and Lincoln, and what pleased 
me most about him was to see him, now that 
he was in power, put into practice the prin- 
ciples he had expressed when he was a boy 
in Maine and when he was a young man in 
113 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

Dakota. It just seemed to me that he was 
giving public expression to what I had always 
known was in him. I think I agreed with 
pretty near everything that he did, and when 
he came out for the Republican nomination 
in the spring of 19 12 I was with him with all 
the strength that I possessed. 

He remembered those talks that we had 
together, just as I remembered them. On 
May 28, 191 2, he wrote me: 

Your letter contains really the philosophy of my 
canvass. After all, I am merely standing for the prin- 
ciples which you and I used to discuss so often in the 
old days both in the Maine woods and along the Little 
Missouri. They are the principles of real Americans 
and I believe that more and more the plain people of 
the country are waking up to the fact that they are 
the right principles. 



CHAPTER XII 

HE is dead now and all the world is seeing 
what I saw forty years ago, and saying 
about him what I said when we lived under 
the same roof in the Dakota days. I knew 
him well, for I saw him under all conditions. 
He was always the same stanch gentleman, 
always a defender of right as he saw it, and 
he saw right himself. It is no use for me to 
name his good qualities. It is enough for me 
to say that I think he had more than any 
man I have ever known and more than any 
man the world has produced since Lincoln. 

I have not read so much as many men, 
but I have read something about many great 
men, and I do not think that in nineteen 
hundred years there has been any man who 
had so many good qualities and knew how 
to use them as well as he did. He was a 
fighter, but in this he only resembled Peter 
Peter was always ready to fight. But Roose- 
115 



BILL SEWALL'S STORY OF T. R. 

velt was always ready to live by the Golden 
Rule. If he had been in a position of power 
in 1 9 14 and if the nations had been ready 
to follow him, I think we would not have 
had this war, and a good deal that may yet 
come. There have been many great men in 
the history of the world, but they have 
almost always had some bad defects. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt's defects were not great — 
and such as they were Time will only soften 
them. 



THE END 



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